


Paper Skin

by Anjelle



Series: Paper Skin [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Modification, Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant, Sharing a Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-02 11:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anjelle/pseuds/Anjelle
Summary: Kakashi is missing. He's not the first child to have disappeared, only the latest, but Sakumo will make sure that he will be the last. He's failed his village too many times. He won't fail his son. Sakumo will find Kakashi and bring him home, no matter how long it takes or what he has to do.But it's not Kakashi that he finds.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Visionary](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6782338) by [esama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama). 

> Someone recommended Visionary to me (which is brilliant - please go read it, you won't regret it. It's such an amazing story with such great characters and fascinating looks at the 'body sharing' plot device - I can't recommend it enough) and after reading it, I felt really inspired. I decided to take a similar premise and roll with it to write a short drabble. Well. It's not short. But it IS complete. This story is fully written at 36K (epilogue included) and I'm happy to finally be posting it here. I'll be posting on Sundays and Fridays until the whole thing is up.
> 
> Enjoy!

It starts as it always does, with a silent breakfast table sometime after dawn. Sakumo lays out the meal he prepared and starts on the dishes without ever eating. He never feels hungry anymore. Food turns to ash in his mouth and the only time he keeps it down long enough to digest is when his son is watching him. These days, Kakashi hardly spares him a glance. His hands stall at that thought, the running tap like white noise in the background of his thoughts, and he takes a steadying breath. When he looks at his hands, he no longer sees himself. When he looks at his hands, he sees what others see—the disgrace of the village. He sees what his son sees.

Kakashi is soundless when he enters the dining hall. Sakumo wouldn’t notice his entry, had he not stolen a glance into the other room from the connected kitchen. He watches as his boy removes the lid from a steaming pot and serves himself. He watches without so much as a greeting. He watches until Kakashi watches back, the corners of his fingers curling beneath his mask, waiting. A silent command.

Sakumo closes his eyes and turns away. Soon he hears the sounds of movement and of eating, but he doesn’t look. He doesn’t quite remember when Kakashi started wearing masks. He’s not sure when Kakashi no longer allowed Sakumo to see his face. Perhaps that’s a memory long buried, and perhaps the best way to deal with it is not to address it at all.

He looks up.

Wordlessly, Kakashi is gone from the table. The house is quiet and alone without a passing word between them and it weighs down on him like lead. Sakumo feels hollow. If it were only his village and his fellow shinobi who looked at him with shame then maybe there would still be something left of his heart to scrape off the floor. But Kakashi looks at him with the same disgust that they do. What he did is as much Kakashi’s burden as it is his. Oh, how he hates it. He hates that his own shortcomings have become his son’s problems. Kakashi is a fine shinobi, even at a young age, even despite his petite frame and lacking height. He’s skilled with a kunai and absorbs every ounce of knowledge presented to him like a sponge.

Kakashi gets the same looks as his father when he’s done nothing wrong.

Sakumo scrubs his hands over his face and stares out the kitchen window at the main road in front of his house. Kakashi disappears down it today just as he does every other day, and with his retreat come thoughts that Sakumo knows he shouldn’t humour.

Sakumo has not been given a mission in a long time. A part of him longs to be useful again. Another, much louder part, reminds him of his teammates' faces carrying on them the same disdain as everyone else’s. Sakumo doesn’t regret saving them despite this. He could never. He doesn’t, but he does regret doing a poor job of it. If he had continued the mission alone, perhaps, or—

But he didn’t. He didn’t, and now he is paying the price.

There is not a lot to do for a ninja with no missions. Sakumo keeps the house spotless and tidy as a way of clearing his mind; he removes clutter and with it, his thoughts. But those same thoughts grow persistent with time. There’s a way to free his son from his shame, even if he, himself, will forever be remembered as a blemish in Konoha’s history.

Kakashi grew up without a mother. It wouldn’t be fair to force him to grow up without a father, too. Sakumo reminds himself of this, but with each passing day, it gets harder.

* * *

By the time Sakumo pulls himself from the spiral of his thoughts, he feels like he’s been drowning. He looks up and the sky beyond the window is dark. The house is dark. He creeps through the house, up to his son’s room. This isn't the first time that Kakashi makes it home without Sakumo ever noticing, and he at the very least wants to check on his boy before bed. Sakumo doesn’t sleep much these days. It’s getting harder to let his mind go blank. With each passing breath, he wonders how long this can go on for. He wonders how long he can last.

Sakumo slides the door to his son’s bedroom open just a crack, expecting to see Kakashi with his blankets pulled up to his chin. He doesn’t. The bed is empty and Sakumo frowns. He wonders, perhaps, if Kakashi’s mission is taking longer than anticipated. It wouldn’t be the first time. He enters the room and straightens the sheets, giving it a cursory glance and sighing. The family portrait usually framed on his nightstand is lying face-down against the wood. Somehow, Sakumo isn’t surprised.

He knows he won’t be able to sleep so he spends the night alone, digging through the old pictures he has boxed away in his closet. The only one he has of all three of them is the one Kakashi’s rejecting on his nightstand, but Sakumo has many of his wife. He has many of Kakashi. He flips through the photos with a tired smile. Those two mean the world to him. He misses his wife dearly, misses her with each passing second of the day, but Sakumo sees her in Kakashi. It's her face beyond that mask. Kakashi's hair and eyes are a product of his father, but everything else is his mother. Sakumo is grateful for that.

When she died, Sakumo knew that he would be okay. He would—had to be—because he had Kakashi. If all the world turned against him then that was fine. All he needed was his boy, his son, the memory of his wife there on that young lad’s face and he would be alright.

Kakashi’s rejection is the last nail in a coffin that Sakumo does not want to build.

* * *

When morning comes, then evening, with hide nor hair of his son, Sakumo feels bile threaten the back of his throat. It would not be the first time that a mission took a turn and caused delay—Sakumo, himself, is frequently the subject of such turns, what with the war going on—but something doesn't feel right.

His first stop is the mission desk. Mission details can’t be given out, no, of course not, but they at the very least can let him know if the team made it back. They had. The young lady on duty checks the scrolls and confirms with him that his son’s squad handed in their report before nightfall the previous day. That does nothing to ease his nerves. Kakashi is in the village and Sakumo should be grateful for that, but why hasn’t he returned home?

Sakumo tries the team captain next, banging on the man’s door in the late hours after sunset. He gets a similar report—that the team separated after meeting with the Hokage, that the captain completed the mission desk report alone. Kakashi should have gone home after that.

Sakumo is a calm man. It takes a lot to rile him up, and more still for him to panic. Sakumo does _ not _ panic. But there’s something inside him that won’t let him rest. There’s something inside him wrangling back his feelings, trying to think rationally. It’s the same voice that made the decision for him that night when everything went wrong and as much as it put him in the position that he’s in now, he wants to trust it. He has to.

It’s all he has.

His last stop that night is the Hokage’s office. Sakumo can see from the outside that the lights are still on and feels relief. He leaps up, tapping on the window, and Hiruzen slides it open with a too-tired sigh.

Hiruzen is an avid smoker. His pipe is lit, the tail end tucked between his lips, held in one hand as he fills out documents with the other. In the advent of the war, the Hokage’s workload became even more burdensome than it usually was. Now, Hiruzen never sleeps. It seems that way, at least, to him. Hiruzen looks to him more weathered now than even during the trenches of the last war.

“It’s unlike you to make such a late visit,” the Hokage says, never looking up from his paperwork. The bags under his eyes betray just how long he’s been there.

Sakumo climbs in through the window and humbles himself before the Hokage. No matter his rising unease or the disgrace that he brought his name, Sakumo is a shinobi of the Leaf and he will treat the Hokage with the respect that he deserves. “I apologize, Lord Third. I know how busy you are.”

Hiruzen’s eyes lift and he offers a tired, half-hearted smile as he waves away Sakumo’s formalities. “Enough of that. What ails you, boy? You’re white as a ghost.”

“Yes. Right. I’m sorry.” Sakumo takes a breath and with it, he levels himself. He rises to his feet and wordlessly implores the Hokage to give him the answers that he needs. “I understand that my son paid a visit to you last night. Would you happen to know where he went after making his report?”

Hiruzen considers this a moment. He places his pipe down on the free space on the desk and interlocks his fingers, pressing them against his chin. If nothing else, Sakumo can be sure that his question is being taken with the utmost care. He appreciates it. “He never mentioned,” Hiruzen settles on finally. “Why? Is the boy missing?”

Sakumo presses his lips together and says nothing. He doesn’t want to admit it. It feels like if he does, if he acknowledges that he doesn’t know where his son disappeared to, it will make the problem more real than it already is. Kakashi is not the type to run away, no matter the hardships he faces at home or how strained their relationship may get. But even if Sakumo can’t verbalize it, he nods.

“I’m sure he hasn’t gone off far,” he assures, more for his own sake than Hiruzen’s. “It’s just… unlike him. He’s never acted like this before and I’m worried.”

Hiruzen narrows his eyes. Sakumo knows that look. He knows there’s something going on in that mind that he won’t like the implications of. But if Hiruzen has something to say, he doesn’t ever say it. “If he hasn’t turned up by morning, notify me. We’ll organize a search party.”

“Right. Thank you, Hiruzen. That means the world to me.”

Sakumo bows and leaps from the window in which he entered, worried more so now than ever—so much so that he doesn’t even notice the casual tone he takes with the Hokage. It doesn’t matter now. The only thing that matters is putting this puzzle together.

* * *

Sakumo first checks Kakashi’s usual hangouts throughout the village—the book store, the weapons shop, the playground that he’d go to every now and then to play with other kids his age. Kakashi was always in a hurry to grow up, to leave his childhood behind and become a shinobi of the Leaf, and it saddened Sakumo. He encouraged the boy to play with his peers even as he ascended the ranks to chunin at six years old. In reality, he never wanted his boy to be treated like the prodigy that he was. No matter how proficient a warrior his son may be, he is still a child. He is young and inexperienced and deserved the years of peace afforded to others his age before being forced to cope with the brutality of war. But that is not what the village wants. That is not what Kakashi wants. Still, Sakumo does what he can for his son to hold onto even the smallest bit of his childhood.

Sakumo really, truly believes that Kakashi will be here. This is where Kakashi runs off to whenever they have a rare but heated argument. If he is mad at Sakumo or needs time away, this is surely where he'll be.

It isn't. The playground and the park in which it belongs are empty and desolate and for a time, all Sakumo has the strength to do is sit on a bench and wait out the night. He does so, head in his hands and a weight on his heart.

Kakashi does not have friends. There was a time when he got along well with children his age, even if he was a little boastful, a little too sure of himself. A little cocky. Lately, that hasn’t been the case. Kakashi withdraws in much the same way as his father and it’s painful to see. He tosses aside the bonds he made and Sakumo knows with perfect certainty that if he were to ask any one of the children Kakashi once played with, they wouldn't know where he is.

Sakumo is alone in this. He is alone and scared and the thoughts that once burdened him do not hold a candle to the weights confining him now.

Kakashi is the world to him. Kakashi is the _one good thing _he has left.

Kakashi is everything and he’s not here.

* * *

The search party is a large one. It fans out in all directions with Konoha at its heart. No matter their thoughts on Sakumo, every shinobi present is focused on their duty, on finding the budding young chunin who disappeared that day. Sakumo has not slept since the last time he saw his son. Exhaustion weighs down on him but he doesn’t feel it, not really, not with his mind so focused on the retrieval of his son.

Sakumo is an excellent tracker. He headed a team of them back in the day—back before he was known as the White Fang, back when he was just a budding newcomer himself. His wife was on that team—a member of the Inuzuka clan, a woman with the skills and cunning of the greatest hunters. That was how they met. They reformed that team again when the kidnappings started—children disappearing from the hamlets surrounding Konoha. That time, his wife was no longer there.

The worrying part comes when none of his ninken can locate the boy’s scent. This isn’t right. This has never happened before. His dogs never once lost a trail right at the start. These summons are his most trusted allies and to think that they lost the scent so early, that they never made it out of the village—

There is something very wrong going on here.

* * *

By the fourth day, Sakumo is dragging his feet. By the sixth, he finally collapses. He wakes up in the hospital hooked up to all sorts of things that he can’t be bothered to care about. The moment he’s up, he’s trying to drag himself out the door. A hand pushes him back down to the hard sickbay mattress and when his eyes search for a face, he finds Hiruzen staring back. He doesn’t try to get up again. Instead, he swipes a hand across his face and smooths back all of the emotions threatening to surface. He doesn’t want to see Hiruzen’s pity. It’ll only hurt more.

“What good will you be to your son if you’re half dead when you find him?” Hiruzen asks, sparing no sympathy as he seats himself on the bedside chair.

“I know,” Sakumo breaths. Once he’s sure he’s reigned himself in, he lowers his hand back down to the bedsheets. This time when he moves it’s to sit up. Hiruzen helps him prop up a pillow behind his back, and the moment he’s upright his head starts to spin.

“You haven’t been eating,” the Hokage chastises, “or sleeping, have you?”

Sakumo won’t meet his eyes but knows that Hiruzen sees through him. He always has.

Hiruzen sighs. “Take care of yourself. If not for you then for that boy of yours. He still needs you.”

“I know,” he says again. There’s a tray of food by his bed that soon finds its way into his lap. At first, all he can manage is to pick at it with his chopsticks. Then, with all the discipline drilled into him by the war, he eats. He eats as though this is a mission given to him by the Hokage because it’s the only way he can force himself to do so. If not for that, he would be chastising himself for eating while his son is still gone. He doesn’t have the time for this. He needs to get back out there, to rejoin the search.

Satisfied for the moment, Hiruzen leans back in his seat. His face is edged with unspoken stress and lined by age as it threatens to catch up to him. “Another child was reported missing the same day that you reported Kakashi,” he says. “An Uchiha within the same age group.”

Sakumo looks up from his half-eaten bowl. “You think they’re related.” It isn’t a question. They’ve known each other long enough to know what the other is thinking and the Hokage's pursed lips say it all. It takes time and willpower to return to their meal. “This has been an ongoing problem, hasn’t it? Disappearances like this.”

“For many children, yes.”. He inclines his head, the brim of his hat shadowing his eyes. “It stopped for a time but I wouldn’t out rule the possibility that they’re parts of a whole.”

“Back then it was infants if I recall.” Sakumo remembers. They had the families of the missing children bring belongings to the front gates the day that the search began—clothes and toys, whatever they were last seen interacting with. Sakumo used the scents from those items to give his ninken a starting point. They were able to follow the trail into the surrounding forests and then—nothing. “And the disappearances happened outside of the village, not within it. Why would that change now?”

“Unclear,” Hiruzen says. “There’s a common thread between the Uchiha boy and your son, however.”

Sakumo nods. “Bloodline traits.”

While not comparable to the sharingan eyes of the Uchiha clan, the Hatake’s heightened senses are a coveted asset to have, especially in the world of trackers. Kakashi’s sense of smell is not classified as a kekkei genkai, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s useful. It may be a stretch to lump it together with something as powerful as the sharingan but it’s the only connection they have. For now, its something.

“Why, though?” he asks. The bowl is empty. His stomach sloshes uncomfortably and he’s worried he ate too fast, but it’s too late to ruminate on that now. “This other boy, you say he’s Kakashi’s age?”

Hiruzen nods.

“The assailants in the previous kidnappings were after infants. Why now target a chunin and a student?”

Hiruzen lifts his head and takes the tray from Sakumo’s lap to discard it off to the side. “I couldn’t say. But I’m hard-pressed to believe that those boys left of their own volition.”

No. Kakashi would never run away. Kakashi isn’t like that. He’s much too responsible, too mature, for anything like that. Sakumo hasn’t thought about that possibility, not even once.

Hiruzen is standing now, squeezing Sakhaveumo’s shoulder. “Rest. Return to the search when you’ve recovered. Don’t worry yourself into an early grave, old friend.”

Sakumo watches him leave. Despite his title and all of the prestige that comes with it, the Hokage is much like an older brother to him. They fought alongside one another and they returned from the trenches with only their lives and a mound of loss behind them. The war brought with it endless tragedies but they came through it with no family to speak of, only each other. Hiruzen is family to him, as much as anyone can be.

Thoughts of his own personal failings are pushed to the wayside. Hiruzen is right. He needs to stay strong because if he doesn’t, then who will?

* * *

It must be a scary experience to be called out of class by the White Fang. The girl, Rin Nohara, the last of her clan’s bloodline, leans back against the wall with her eyes cast to the dirt. She rubs one arm with her opposite hand, taps the toe of her shoe against the ground, and worries her lip. Sakumo smiles. It’s a tired thing, but it’s all he can manage in the two weeks of his son’s absence. He hasn’t lost hope, not yet, and this is only the next step in the process.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to worry you,” he says. His tone is gentle and fatherly, taking from what he used to use with his boy, back when they exchanged more than a few short words. She meets his eyes and her brows crease. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Obito Uchiha, if that’s okay.”

Rin’s eyes dart around before she settles on him again and pushes off the wall. “Are you going to find him?”

“I’m going to do my best,” he affirms. He doesn’t kneel to match her height or even crouch—its rude, even to children, if his son is an example to follow. He gives her the utmost respect. She may have only had eight years to live by, but that doesn’t make her account of things any less valuable. According to Obito’s homeroom instructor, the boy was a bit of an outcast. He sees his only friend in Rin Nohara, the little girl before him. The only family that he has is his elderly grandmother, a woman in poor health who Sakumo spoke with the previous day. “Can you tell me a little about him?”

Rin thinks for a minute. “He’s a loudmouth,” she says, but the words are fond and exasperated all at once. “He’s going to be Hokage. He’s not very good yet, but he says he’ll be the best one day. I believe him.”

Sakumo nods. “I bet he will. Did you happen to see him the day he went missing?”

“We were walking home together. Obito lives further than I do, so he walks me home and goes the rest of the way himself.”

“Around what time was that?”

Rin thinks for a minute, her eyes raised to the heavens. “Sunset?” she answers uncertainly. “Obito pulled a prank on the teacher, so he was punished and had to stay late. I waited for him. He gets lonely.”

He smiles. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

Rin blushes and looks down at her shoes. Sakumo’s too distracted to tell whether it’s a sign of a schoolyard crush or a simple show of embarrassment. Either way, Obito’s last known sighting lines up well with Kakashi’s. That is both a blessing and a curse.

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Like what?”

Sakumo hums and takes a moment to think. “Like, hm… Anything strange, perhaps? Something he wouldn’t normally say? Or maybe where he was headed?”

Rin shakes her head, shoulders slumped, looking for all the world like she’s failed her dearest friend. “No, I don’t remember anything like that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Sakumo ensures. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

“Will that help you find him?”

“I sure hope so.”

It, at the very least, puts things into perspective. Before now, Sakumo has had a lot of trouble finding witnesses to Obito that day. It appears that the boy isn’t given much attention around the village. Even the Uchiha’s clan leader, when prompted, did not want to speak of the boy. Were it any other Uchiha, the clan would be in an uproar. They pride themselves in their bloodline above all else. They keep track of their members with unhealthy scrutiny. But Obito Uchiha, this missing boy, is not their priority.

It’s the next day that Sakumo learns why. He goes to Hiruzen with this newfound information and a favour to ask. He’s given access to Konoha’s registry. It isn’t so hard a thing to gain access to—the registry—provided that the Hokage gives written consent. It’s through looking in the database, finding the scroll dedicated to the Uchiha lineage, that he learns that Obito’s blood is not pure. A soiled bloodline is grounds for banishment from any old clan and none are as stuck in their ways as the Uchiha. The father was outcasted from the family when he asked the clan head for permission to wed his lover, a clanless civilian. After the birth of their child, both parents died, one and then the other. Obito was left with only his maternal grandmother to care for him.

Obito is a boy sorely missed by few, an Uchiha with no guarantee of inheriting the sharingan eyes for which his clan is so well known. It’s easy to see why he makes for an easy target.

Why Kakashi, then?

* * *

Sakumo’s heart breaks the day that the search is called off. After two staggeringly long months, Hiruzen apologizes. The strain of manpower the search pulls is like poison in this time of war and Sakumo understands, really he does. He knows better than any the travesties of war. For so many of their shinobi to be pulled into what to many must be a meaningless endeavour puts everyone at risk. Those are bodies better left to fight on the front lines, to keep the battle away from the village. To keep civilians safe. Sakumo understands, but that doesn’t make it any less a blow to the gut.

He continues on his own. He won’t stop. He hears the whispers in the streets of how his mind must have been lost when he made the grave error that he did in battle because he’s still out there searching for a lost cause. He hears the way people gossip about how his son left to put distance between himself and the Hatake name. Sakumo hears it all, and it feels like a pit of tar struggling to pull him down to a place he ought not to go.

A place where only death awaits.

But Sakumo knows Kakashi better than anyone else. He knows his son and he loves his son and the only thing that’s keeping him going is that love.

On the anniversary of their disappearances, when a memorial service is held, Sakumo does not attend.

The funny thing about time is that it numbs all wounds. In the early days of his son’s disappearance, Sakumo was nothing more than the byproduct of his own fear and loss. Now, he spends the majority of his day seated alone in the dining hall, one serving set in front of him and an empty bowl across the table. He sits there until his food grows cold, until he finally gathers the energy to eat, until the sun is cresting the horizon and he’s ready to set out once more. The hope still buried somewhere inside is smothered beneath layers of apathy.

Sakumo no longer expects anything of his searches. He goes out simply because it's the only thing he can do. The gate guards look at him with sympathy every time he passes by. He tries not to think of it.

The forests of Konoha have always been home to him. As a young lad still learning his Hatake senses, he made those trees his own personal playground. He would track animal prints in the dirt and leaves and scent them out, follow them to wild game. The Hatake clan was one of high standing, but there was a period where war took its toll on the village—a few years time where poverty was something everyone experienced until the village could pull itself back together again, to return to normalcy. He hunted to offset the blow that it took to his family. He used his senses to hunt. Through hunting, he learned to track. Through tracking, he became a jōnin. And through experience, he learned to fight. He owes everything to these forests.

Now, when he looks through the trees he feels nothing.

Sakumo walks through the forest. Today is one of his off days and the search feels little more than a formality. He cuts through the brush and drags his feet until he hits one of the thinner roads that mark merchant paths through the Land of Fire. He turns onto one of the branching paths—it doesn’t matter which, none of them ever take him to where he needs to go—and sways as he goes through the motions of his every day.

Then there’s something on the air. It’s probably a travelling merchant, he tells himself, but no—there’s something in that scent that’s buzzing in his mind. He doesn’t recognize it. It’s entirely new. But still, despite everything, there are alarm bells going off in his head. Instinct demands he locate its source.

Sakumo takes off through the trees in a mad dash towards the scent. He’s no longer swaying, his feet no more dead weight than the rest of him as he leaps from one branch to the next.

His eyes catch on something in the fading sunset glow. He stops and crouches low on a branch and watches the forest floor through the leaves. A pale-white body takes broken steps below. It’s a boy, it looks like, a young one. His body is bare to the world, cuts and rips and bruises marring paper-white skin and leaves and dirt staining his pale hair—

_ Kakashi. _

Sakumo drops from the branch like an anchor and lands nearly two feet before the boy. The child is startled. He stumbles back, arms pinwheeling at his sides as he tries not to lose his balance, but Sakumo catches him. He leans forward and steadies the boy’s lithe body by his shoulders, drops to his knees and feels tears well behind his eyes.

“Kakashi—”

Words stick in his throat. The boy is pale-skinned with pale hair, yes, but to a degree more dramatic than Kakashi’s, he sees then. The hair is a stark white to Kakashi’s silver, the skin pasty as though the boy has never seen sunlight. It’s as though all of the colour were bleached from his body, like a blank canvas. All but the eyes—charcoal black to Kakashi’s cool grey. Dark voids of eyes. Haunting eyes.

With one clumsy motion, the boy sneaks one of the kunai out of Sakumo’s pouch and pulls away on uncertain footing. He brandishes the weapon like a threat, his legs shaking, eyes wavering.

Sakumo doesn’t know what to say.

The face is all wrong. It’s not Kakashi’s face. Sakumo sees a resemblance—he _ swears _ that he does—but that’s not Kakashi’s face. He knows Kakashi’s face, knows every line, every curve, a beautiful homage to his equally beautiful mother. To Sakumo’s wife. This boy is not his son, he knows that, but there’s something so uncanny about him that Sakumo can’t look away.

Sakumo steadies himself with a breath. With it, he rises to his feet.

A kunai shoots past his head. It embeds itself in the tree behind him; he doesn’t need to look, the following _thunk as_ good a sign as any. The moment the boy throws it, he loses his balance and falls into the dirt. His legs are unsteady, confused, like he’s never walked before.

Sakumo does everything he can to bite down the strange emotions that he’s feeling. This boy is an unknown. He’s an unknown and he’s hurt, naked and shivering against the evening chill. For the first time in two years, Sakumo shoves the thoughts of his son to the back of his mind and focuses on the now. Right now, there is a boy bleeding and desperate and scared. Right now, this is all that matters.

Sakumo smiles down at the boy. “That’s a good arm you’ve got there,” he says. “You held that kunai like a veteran.”

The boy opens his mouth, his lips quivering, but no words come out. He looks helpless for all of ten seconds before he looks angry, ready to lash out. He doesn’t. Nothing happens. Half a minute later, the boy is still sitting, dumbfounded, on the forest floor.

Sakumo leans forward and offers him a hand. The boy stares at it like he doesn’t know what it’s for, then makes to take it. His fingers are trembling. No, _all _of him is trembling.

He doesn’t take it in the end.

Sakumo’s smile falters a bit and he straightens up, rubbing the back of his neck and looking around. They’re out in the middle of nowhere—walking distance from the village, sure, but it’d be a long walk—and he’s got nothing on him to clothe the boy. Add to that the boy’s unwillingness to cooperate and Sakumo isn’t sure where to go from here. He needs to get the kid back to the village, but how does he go about doing that without scaring the poor thing off?

Sakumo feels a tug on his shirt. He looks back down to see the boy looking determinedly at the ground, the fabric of Sakumo’s shirt bunched in his weak grip.

Above all else, the boy is scared.

Moving slowly, cautiously, Sakumo leans down. The boy looks shocked—then angry—then resigned. When Sakumo gathers the child into his arms, he’s met with no resistance.

“I notice you’re not having a good go of it walking on your own,” he says when the boy twists around enough to look at him. “I’ll help you, how’s that sound?”

The boy narrows his eyes, sharp words on a wordless tongue, but it doesn’t last long. He resigns himself to it, going limp in Sakumo’s arms, and Sakumo holds him like he’s glass. For how fragile he looks, perhaps he is.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friday update, as promised! This chapter is somewhere around 11K - probably the longest chapter there'll be, but I haven't quite decided how to divide up the rest yet, so I guess we'll see.
> 
> Enjoy!

When the boy wakes, Sakumo is seated at the foot of the hospital bed. He pushes all doubt aside to smile his brightest at the boy. Hospitals aren’t fun for anyone. Sakumo’s been stuck in one enough times for it to feel like its own form of hell and the last thing he wants is for this unknown to feel confined or imprisoned. He brings a meal from home for the boy—two servings so that they can eat together in the case that the boy doesn't like eating alone. There is hospital food, too, but nobody wants to eat that unless there are no other viable options. The very first time that Kakashi got injured on a mission, Sakumo had done the same thing.

The boy is bleary-eyed and only half there for the first little while as sleep removes its hold on him. He scrubs at his eyes, frowns, then scrubs at them again. Then he blinks—once, twice, half a dozen times before he’s satisfied. Except that he doesn’t seem to  _ be _ satisfied. He stops only because doing more of the same feels unnecessary. Or maybe because he’s more aware of the world around him.

It takes a while for Sakumo to be noticed. That’s okay—he doesn’t mind.

“Finally awake?” Sakumo asks. He doesn’t wait for a reply. Instead, he goes for the bag resting on the bedside chair and rifles through it until he locates a thermos. He pours some of the hot soup into the lid and offers it to the boy. “Must be hungry after all that walking. Here.”

It takes time for the boy to take it. Sakumo’s a patient man.

The boy eats. Sakumo does, too, when he tests the waters and finds that the child isn’t bothered by it. It’s quiet as they fill their stomachs and that’s okay. The boy's arms are still shaking. He tries the spoon with one hand, then the other, before he foregoes it all and sips directly from the bowl.

There’s something strange about this child, something Sakumo can’t put his finger on.

After a careful assessment by the hospital’s medic-nin, it’s determined that there’s nothing physically wrong with the boy. The injuries on his arms and legs are casualties of clumsy steps, not an attack. All of his cuts and bruises are of his own making. He’s found to be anemic and malnourished, but not to the extent of which he’s in danger. Really, Sakumo was expecting far more interesting findings.

When the boy is done eating, the lid of the thermos back where it belongs, Sakumo decides that it’s best to ask his questions now and get them out of the way. There will no doubt be a Yamanaka coming to bring the boy’s origins into question and he rather give the boy a chance to say things for himself before his memories are poked and prodded by an unfamiliar. Sakumo knows the risk that he took when he brought an unknown into the village. This is, in part, why he stays by the boy’s side. In times of war, no outsiders are to be trusted.

Sakumo likes to think that he’s good with kids. He puts on a friendly smile and he gets a dull glare in return. It’s not harsh, nothing as venomous as the desperate looks thrown his way back in the forest, so it’s progress enough. “I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me,” he says.

The boy nods. It’s reluctant, but he’s cooperating.

“Good,” he breathes. “Now, tell me: where’d you come from?”

He opens his mouth to answer and there’s a noise, a sound like a word but not, and he frowns. When he tries again, much the same thing happens. He’s increasingly frustrated the more that he tries, fisting the paper-thin sheets over his legs. Sakumo wonders about that. He wonders if, perhaps, there is damage overlooked. He wonders again if a seal was placed on the child to keep him from talking. If that’s the case, it’ll be very good to have a Yamanaka have a look at the boy’s inner workings to put it all together.

Speaking is far from the only form of communication, though. Sakumo’s not bothered.

When the boy gets a little too frustrated, Sakumo gives his shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll be right back.”

He returns with a blank scroll, a brush and an ink pot, all procured from one of the nice ladies at the front desk. The tray of hospital food is still sitting on the bedside table—the food is discarded and the tray propped up on the boy’s lap, the scroll on top and the ink pot to the side.

Sakumo holds out the brush. “Why don’t we try that again?”

The boy nods. He takes the brush into his left hand. The words are sloppy and shaky, a product of his still-quivering body, and he’s angry at himself but pushes through anyway.

_ Konoha. _

Sakumo’s eyes widen. A missing child, maybe? This boy does not have the markers of an Uchiha, though, nor does he have Kakashi’s face. But Konoha has had its share of missing children in the past; it isn’t outside of the realm of possibility for the boy to be one of the children who were taken years ago. No, wait, the age doesn’t work. He should be younger. The boy looks to be at  _ least _ Kakashi’s age—although.

_ Although. _

Were he a child from back then, he would not be from Konoha. He would be from one of Konoha’s surrounding civilian villages. Not only that, but as an infant, would he even know the village from which he hailed? He shouldn’t. Something doesn’t add up.

The boy glares down at the word as though it personally wronged him. He switches hands with the brush and crosses it out furiously. Beneath it, he tries again.

_ Underground. _

Underground.  _ Underground. _ Sakumo rolls that over in his head as he watches the brush slip from the left to the right hand and back again. The boy’s very conflicted over these one word answers he’s giving, so Sakumo wonders if perhaps another question would be less frustrating for the boy. Something simple, something that could never be so complicated.

“Alright, then,” he breathes as he drops down onto the chair, leaning his forearms on his knees. He’s patient with the boy—can tell how much the kid really  _ needs _ that patience, and is ever smiling. When the boy looks at him then, he looks ashamed. Apologetic. It’s a drastic change from his frustration moments ago. “Why don’t you tell me your name?”

The brush slips out of the child’s hand and clatters onto the tray below. Ink splatters onto the scroll, the sheets and even the hospital gown covering the boy who just doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are fixed to Sakumo, shaking just like the rest of him. His mouth is moving soundlessly and then he’s gritting his teeth.

It takes time for him to look away. Before he does, though, Sakumo thinks that he sees something in those dark eyes, something that he recognizes.

The boy won’t move. Sakumo sighs, wondering what he did to close the boy off like this, and picks up the brush. He puts everything away and wipes up the stray ink, first off the tray, then the sheets, and then moves closer to clear it off the boy’s gown. The boy’s focus is grounded to his lap, his head hung low.

He places a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he assures. “Let’s try this again when you’re feeling up to it.”

* * *

Sakumo knows exactly why this unknown needs to be vetted by T&I, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. At the very least, he wishes that they could do the questioning elsewhere, in a place less intimidating to a young child. But, well. He supposes that’s none of his business.

After discharge, the Hokage instructs him to lead the boy straight to T&I for a thorough interrogation. It takes a little prodding to get the kid to willingly hold his hand but eventually, it’s allowed. It’s mostly to help the boy, so clumsy on his feet, to keep his balance. More than once, Sakumo feels the desperate drag of the child’s weight. He doesn’t say anything.

Before they enter, Sakumo faces the sky. Its red hues and blotches of colour warn him that it’s about that time and he does the math quickly in his head. Most interrogations last a total of two hours, provided that the interrogators don’t find anything suspicious, and Sakumo’s nightly searches are normally three. He feels guilty but rationalizes that he can cut it short for just one night. Kakashi would forgive him, he’s sure. He’s not so sure that he’ll forgive himself.

Sakumo gets hard looks when he enters the building. The boy notices. His eyes dart around and he leans closer to his guide, uncertainty in his steps. T&I is home to many hostile critics of the actions he took that day, but after all that has happened, Sakumo has too many more pressing matters occupying space in his mind to humour their looks.

He guides the boy as instructed into one of the interrogation rooms and seats him down. It’s only minutes later that Inoki Yamanaka greets them with a friendly smile. He’s the current head of the clan and one of the easiest people to be around. Hiruzen made a personal request that Inoki be the one to question the boy on Sakumo’s behalf. Out of all of the shinobi employed at T&I, only one is good with kids. Most aren’t good with people, just in general.

“Sakumo,” Inoki greets. “Thank you for coming.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“And who’s this we have here?” Inoki’s attention is on the boy now seated at the wooden table in the middle of the room. His eyes are friendly, but Sakumo can already see them searching the unknown, studying.

Sakumo places a firm hand on the boy’s back. “That’s what we’re hoping to find out.”

He reported to Hiruzen all of the odd behaviour that he noticed in his time with the boy, taking special care to describe his sudden mood swings and the way he wrote different answers with different hands when questioned. No doubt everything he said is detailed on the file that Inoki sets down on the table.

Inoki smiles and sits across from the child. “I promise I’ll do my very best.”

Sakumo believes him. Inoki is at the top of T&I not because he’s brutal or intimidating, but because he’s calm and resourceful. If anyone can tell them what’s going on, it’s him.

He takes a knee in front of the boy and looks up at the pale face flashing vague, brief emotions back. Sakumo never crouches in front of children, not usually. He meets them with the same respect he does an adult. But to the boy sitting in this chair right now, the world is already big enough without Sakumo there to add to it. Just this once he makes himself appear small. Just this once, he looks up at the child and smiles. “This is Inoki Yamanaka. He’s a friend of mine. He’s here to help, I promise you that. I need you to listen to what he says while I’m gone. I’m leaving, but I’ll be back.”

The boy glances over his shoulder at the interrogator and nods. For all of five minutes, he looks calm, as though he believes every word.

Sakumo hefts himself up and stretches. “I’ll be headed out, then. Oh—” His arms fall to his sides and he frowns. “You may not get verbal answers out of him. He can write, though—try using that.”

“Noted.”

When he makes to leave, there’s a tug on his sleeve. He looks back to find black eyes staring up at him, pleading with him. The calm is gone. The panic sets in. But just as soon as it comes, it’s smoothed over again. The boy lets go and turns away.

And now Sakumo feels guilty. He can’t stay, though; only members of T&I are allowed to be present during interrogations. And he has another boy to search for.

Still, there’s regret when he walks through that door and feels eyes on his back.

* * *

Even in his darkest hours, Sakumo remains punctual. He’s waiting in the lobby of Torture and Interrogation two minutes before the two hour mark with his arms folded across his chest. The search bore no fruit, but he’s used to that by now. It sours his mood nonetheless. When two minutes pass and the door to the unknown’s room remains locked, he decides to take a seat. These things are never timed. A few more minutes, maybe half an hour, and so long as Inoki hasn’t found anything suspicious, that door will open up. Sakumo is patient.

It’s at the three hour mark that he starts to worry. Three hours usually means that they found something and he really hopes that isn’t the case. The boy is… odd, to say the least, but nothing about him screams malicious intent. Sakumo can’t picture that tiny, wobbly wreck to be a sleeper agent or spy. Then again, in times of war there is no one you can trust. Everyone—every _ thing _ —is suspect.

At three-and-a-half hours, the door opens and he practically flies off his seat. Inoki sees him and tries a halfhearted smile but it’s fake and Sakumo fears the worst.

He wonders if the boy has been relocated.

Inoki is carrying a much thicker file now, loose papers shoved haphazardly within it. He adjusts them in his hands, clears his throat. Neither are really sure how to broach the topic. It’s late, T&I is empty and Inoki was instructed to share with Sakumo whatever he found, which looks to be not all good.

They take a seat in the lobby. No one is left on the lower floors of the building but Inoki would never speak so openly about his findings if they contained sensitive information, which is promising. Before he can speak, though, he pulls the loose paper from the file. Sakumo immediately recognizes the sloppy writing and the cryptic words written overtop. He recognizes the ink splatter even more so. It looks like their young charge got frustrated his fair share of times.

“Do you notice anything?” Inoki asks.

Sakumo sighs and rubs his forehead. “He’s disjointed.”

“More than that,” Inoki urges. When he gets no response, he flips through the pages until coming across one in particular. He holds it up and hands it over, tapping the page demandingly. “This is what he wrote when I asked for his name.”

More than the others, this page is a mess. Words were written and then angrily crossed out, again and again across the whole of the page. There’s more ink than paper showing. The only thing that can be made out in the mess is a short half-word in the bottom left corner, ‘obi’, and something crossed out next to it. It almost looks like ‘Tobi’ if Sakumo squints the right way. He’s fairly certain that’s not what the boy was trying to write, but ‘Tobi’ is better than having no name for the boy at all.

Tobi, huh?

There’s more frantic tapping against the page. It pulls him from his musings and he glances up at the Yamanaka. “I’ll assume your conclusion is that he doesn’t know it.”

“I’m not sure, to be perfectly honest,” Inoki says. “It’s almost like he couldn’t decide. He would pick up the brush and,” he makes an ‘x’ with his fingers, “cross it out.  _ Violently _ .”

That’s certainly one way to put it. Sakumo flips through the pages and reads the random, unexplained words on each. With answers like these, he’s not sure what the questions are. They’re too vague. And to Sakumo’s untrained eyes, it almost looks like two different people were writing on these pages. Then again, it could all be conjecture; everything written is shaky and unfocused regardless of what style the writing is in.

“He confirmed with me that he’s ten,” Inoki continues, and it hits hard because that’s  _ Kakashi’s _ age. “I had to tell him the year first, though. From what I could gather, he was brought someplace underground against his will. I’ll assume a lab. He said there were other children there.”

A lab. Other children in a lab.

One of Hiruzen’s greatest theories is that, to this day, experiments on wood release are being done even after it’s been condemned as a forbidden technique. Infants are taken from their cradles in the dead of night to be used as unwilling test subjects. If this boy—if  _ Tobi _ is one of those children…

But how could he escape?

“Relay this to Lord Hokage immediately,” Sakumo says, eyeing the inked pages with a level of scrutiny. “If there are other children then we need to locate it.”

“Of course,” Inoki nods.

“Were you able to get a location out of him?”

“Not quite. I tried to look into his memories when he couldn’t give me an answer, but—” Inoki takes the pages back from Sakumo and tosses them back into the file’s folder. “If I’m being completely honest, Sakumo, I have no idea where to start.”

Sakumo frowns. “What do you mean?”

Inoki needs a moment to compose himself which is telling enough. He steeples his fingers and stares out at the empty room, choosing the right words to say. “When I entered his mind, I couldn’t make sense of anything,” he says. “It was as though he had layers of memories overlapping. Everything was jumbled together and every time I asked a question, his mind would find two things at once to draw upon. I couldn’t grasp what was going on at all. Even the memories he formed in that moment were overlapped—just slightly different versions recounting the same event.

“It’s not just that, though—there’s duplicity even in the way that he writes. He can write separate answers with both his left and right arms simultaneously. And the writing is different—the  _ style _ is different between both arms.”

Suddenly Sakumo wants to take a closer look at those pages. He thinks better of asking. “What are you implying, exactly?”

“I don’t know.” Inoki throws up his arms in frustration. One hand held the file and, sure enough, all of the loose papers slip free onto the floor. He curses, steps on one, and gets up out of his chair to gather them up. Inoki is a calm, pleasant man. For him to be this riled up, he must be feeling a new level of frustration. “That he was experimented on,” he decides then. “That he’s able to do things he shouldn’t be able to do because of it. And that, despite everything I just said, there’s nothing wrong with him. There’s no seal that’s preventing him from talking. Cognitively, he’s okay. He should be functioning normally, just—everything is happening twice for him and I don’t know why.”

Everything is happening twice, huh?

Sakumo thinks back to the hospital and the word salad that came in answer to his question. If everything is happening twice, he wonders if Tobi tries giving two separate answers as well.

“You don’t look worried by this.”

“Hm?” Sakumo pulls himself out of his thoughts and smiles. “Oh. Well, I was just thinking that it’s good he doesn’t seem to be a spy, if what you found is correct.”

“No. I’m certain he isn’t a plant from another village,” he says. “But now I’m not sure what to do with him. If he were a plant, we would keep him here in T&I.”

Sakumo bends forward and picks up the last scribbled mess of a paper off the floor, Konoha scrawled messily across it in oversized letters. He hands it over to Inoki, who mutters a word of thanks around the pile he’s shoving back into the folder.

“Let me speak with Lord Hokage about it.”

* * *

Sakumo opens the door to the interrogation room and on the other side, Tobi sits patiently. Tobi’s head swivels around to face him and he releases a breath, the foundations of a smile somewhere in his eyes that never quite make it to his lips. “You’re back.”

He speaks. That’s progress. If everything is happening twice for this boy, then it must be a task to only speak once. The boy makes no motions towards the effort, though, and if he won’t then neither will Sakumo.

“Sorry,” he smiles, entering the room. “I was held up a bit. I hear you cooperated well with Inoki. Thank you for that.”

Whatever threadbare smile was there is now gone, replaced with hard lines. Tobi glares at the table. “I couldn’t help.”

“You did, though.” Sakumo stops before the boy and reaches out a hand to ruffle the pale mop of hair. “You were a big help.”

The boy groans and ducks beneath the hand. For the first time, there’s a little colour in his cheeks.

Things get a bit awkward when both go silent. Sakumo isn’t sure how to broach the subject that he needs to or how Tobi will take it, what with how unpredictably short-lived Tobi’s moods are, and he scratches his chin. Eventually, though, he doesn’t have to say anything. Small hands pull his own from where it rests on the boy's head and hold on, eyes averted to the wall.

When Tobi speaks, there’s no inflection. His eyes say what his mouth does not. “Let’s go.”

Sakumo is amused, if nothing else.

* * *

The White Fang of Konoha did not become known as such through battle alone. Sakumo is a nurturing man by nature. He’s the type to protect the weak and give where he can. So when he’s presented with a child like Tobi, it stands to reason that Sakumo will want to feed and clothe him and give him a safe place to wait out the next uncertain leg of his journey. The Hokage is not surprised when he gets a midnight visit from the White Fang, nor is he shocked to any degree by the request that is made.

For the first time in a while, Sakumo is feeling a little proud of himself. He opens the front entrance of the Hatake estate to his new guest and he doesn’t know what to expect. He certainly doesn’t expect the sloped shoulders or instant slouch, or the clenched fists at the sides of Tobi’s body. Sakumo doesn’t say anything.

He enters the room and hangs up his flak jacket before wandering into the sitting room to discard the rest of his belongings. Tobi follows him in slowly. The boy is more surefooted, more confident in his step, and it’s a relief to see.

Tobi trails a hand along the wall, feeling the wood beneath his fingertips as Sakumo busies himself in the kitchen. Sakumo is wondering what to feed the boy. The medic-nin gave him a list of things to avoid that could upset his stomach, sure, but he’s more concerned with what Tobi might like. Then again, he’s getting ahead of himself. The very first thing Tobi needs is a bath and some new clothes. Wearing that hospital gown must be uncomfortable in a lot of different ways and Sakumo does not envy him.

When he moves back out into the sitting room, he pauses. Tobi’s standing by the altar, holding Kakashi’s picture up to his face, and it stings a bit. But Sakumo is not the type to be bothered by something like this. He leans in the doorway and waits, watching as Tobi’s fingers run gently over the glass.

“Kakashi,” Sakumo supplies. Tobi jumps. His head snaps around to look at Sakumo and the picture slips from his fingers. It hits against the ground and cracks the glass, startling the boy again.

The kid looks horrified. He has Sakumo’s sympathies, really. “Sorry, I—”

Sakumo pushes off the wall and crouches next to Tobi, picking up the frame between his hands. The glass can easily be replaced. He’s not worried. He smiles up at the boy and presents the picture. “My son. Cute, isn’t he?”

Tobi doesn’t say anything. He opens his mouth to speak, nothing comes out, and Sakumo assumes that means he has  _ two _ things to say.

Sakumo gives the photo one last fond glance before he places it back down next to the picture of his wife. “He’s missing,” he continues. “But we’ll find him.”

The jōnin pushes to his feet and nods to the door. “You’re looking a little a grimey after your night in the forest. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

The curious thing about Tobi is that he finds his way to the bathroom all on his own. Sakumo waits at the bottom of the stairs and listens. Soon there’s running water. The door is still open, the light filtering down the hall, and it’ll take some time for the bath to fill up. In the meantime, Sakumo enters Kakashi’s room. He takes a steadying breath at the door because this is the first in a long time since he’s done this, the first time since that first night, and then opens the closet door. His son’s clothes are still lined up untouched. Looking at them then, he’s not sure that Tobi will be a  _ perfect  _ fit—he’s built a little hardier than Kakashi and has more height—but they’re a marked improvement from what the kid has on now. He takes a few and feels himself hollow out anew as he folds them over his arm and heads for the bathroom.

At the bottom of the stairs, he thinks he hears something. The bathroom door is still swung wide, the bath still running. He waits a moment, curious, listening to what sounds like a voice. Sakumo may have a heightened sense of smell but his hearing is somewhere around average, so he takes a few steps up the staircase when he can’t make out the words.

“—to’s eyes.”

He arches a brow. That’s Tobi’s voice, but there’s something different about it—about the inflection. It sounds… neater, somehow.

“And Kakashi’s, what? Everything?”

He drops the clothes. They crumple to the floor in a heap and it takes everything in his power to pick them back up again. He ascends the stairs two at a time until he comes up on the landing and is staring into the bathroom directly ahead.

Tobi snaps to look at him. He’s kneeling on the countertop, pressed up against the mirror above the sink. He has one hand holding him steady and the other pressing against the skin of his face and he looks absolutely horrified.

It lasts for a moment before Tobi’s face smooths back out, a laziness to his eyes as he meets Sakumo levelly. “Clothes?” he asks, hopping off the countertop. He holds out a hand expectantly.

Sakumo does not know what to say. He hands over the few outfits that he grabbed, no longer neatly folded as they were when he fetched them, and watches Tobi place them by the sink. Tobi looks them over carefully, feeling the fabric between his fingers.

He does not know what to say or how to ask about what he heard, so he doesn’t. It eats away at him as he forces a smile back into place, screams at him to just ask, to demand to know what the boy was saying about Kakashi, but the more he demands this of himself, the more foolish he feels.

Tobi is a broken child that experiences everything twice. Sakumo’s ashamed for ever thinking that whatever he heard was something of ill intent.

“Take your time,” he says. “I’ll start on dinner. Any requests?”

Tobi opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes out. Speaking twice again, then.

Sakumo gives him a sympathetic look and wraps a hand around the door handle. “How about I pick tonight and you pick tomorrow?”

Tobi averts his eyes and reaches behind to scratch his head. “Yeah. That.”

Another tonal shift. Sakumo doesn’t mention it. He closes the door and descends the stairs, but even as he does he hears words echoing from behind the bathroom door. Quieter this time, careful.

He knows better than to go back up and listen.

* * *

Sakumo is an early riser. It doesn’t matter how late he goes to bed or how tired he is from a mission; no matter the circumstances, he always wakes at the break of dawn. He uses the time in the mornings to get everything done around the house and prepare breakfast—Kakashi was always a notoriously late sleeper on his days off, so that gave Sakumo plenty of time to work with.

When he wakes up this morning, nothing is different. It doesn’t matter that he had a restless sleep; he’s still up at the first hint of sunlight in the sky and he’s still expecting to get everything that he usually does over and done with. What  _ does _ make this morning different is that, for the first time in two years, Sakumo isn’t alone in the house. He’ll have to remember to prepare extra food for his guest.

But when he opens the door to his room, all he smells is food. He follows the scent to the dining hall where there are two places set. The meal is simple—rice and one side dish, and the rice looks a little chewy—but Sakumo’s question is  _ why _ .

The kitchen is a bit of a mess, honestly. Nothing has been cleaned or put away, not that such a simple meal makes much of a mess anyway, and he finds himself smiling. He wonders how Tobi managed to find his way around an unfamiliar kitchen.

When Sakumo goes to sit, he notices the food is going cold. He frowns. Why did Tobi make it if he wasn’t going to eat? With his feet still dragging, Sakumo wanders around a little in search of the boy only to find the bathroom light on at the top of the stairs again.

He has no illusions about what he’ll find.

Sure enough, Tobi is sitting on the counter, staring hard at his reflection. He doesn’t notice Sakumo standing in the doorway—is too absorbed in whatever it is he’s looking at. This time he’s not speaking.

Sakumo knocks on the door and jolts the boy from his thoughts. He smiles, nodding to the stairs. “Food’s getting cold.”

“Oh, uh. Right.”

The boy dashes down the stairs with considerable speed when compared to his slow staggering walk from the night before.

They eat in relative silence and neither is too comfortable with that. It doesn’t take an expert to see the boy writhing in his own thoughts, and Sakumo has enough pity left in him to search for a topic before the boy starts squirming.

“You’re a good cook,” he says—and the look he gets back tells him that Tobi does not believe that one bit. “Who taught you?”

Tobi shrugs vaguely. “Taught myself.”

“That’s impressive for someone your age.”

There’s another shrug. Tobi’s bowl is empty. He’s staring down at his reflection in the glass by his left hand, eyeing it. He’s fixated on his appearance, for one reason or another, growing increasingly agitated. Then, “Do I look—strange to you?”

Sakumo arches a brow. “Bit of an odd question to ask, don’t you think?”

Then all of that falls away—the impatience, agitation, everything—and in its wake is simply an absence. “Forget it.”

“You don’t,” Sakumo says, resting his chin in his palm as he gives the child a look-over. “A bit pale, though. You could use some sunlight.”

Tobi looks at him and something about it feels wrong on that face. Something about it reminds him so much of—

“Do I look like your son?”

Sakumo lifts his head and stares at the boy. The tone Tobi’s using is the calm one, the one he so rarely gets to hear. “I—” The words stick. “Why?”

The boy doesn’t look away. Sakumo is used to him averting his eyes and hanging his head, but he’s doing none of that now. “You called me Kakashi before,” he says. “When you found me.”

Sakumo thinks back to the pale hair and skin that stuck out to him in the brush. He remembers the staggering, unsteady body of a child so close in age to his son and all he could think was that  _ finally _ —

He shakes his head. “No,” he says and then, after more consideration, “maybe a little in the face. At a glance, certainly. I’m sorry if I startled you. I let my thoughts get away from me that night.”

He’d hoped. He’d certainly hoped.

“I see.” Tobi closes his eyes and is silent a moment before, quietly, “Could I ask a favour?”

* * *

Tobi is a brave boy. He presents himself to the Hokage like a much older man, greeting Hiruzen with formality and respect. Sakumo gives him the space that he needs to speak, standing off to the side against the wall. It’s not hard to get in to see the Hokage, not as it should be for an unknown like Tobi. Even in the sorry state that he’s fallen to, Sakumo’s name brings with it enough respect to grant him an unscheduled audience with Hiruzen. This is not the first and certainly won’t be the last, not for how long the two veterans have known each other, and he’s glad that the name he carries can still be useful to someone, tarnished and tainted though it may be.

Hiruzen sizes the boy up in a matter of moments. He sits at his desk with his fingers drawn together as Tobi makes his plea and listens. Tobi is using the calm tone again, as he seems to do whenever important matters are addressed. Then, when there’s a break in Tobi’s speech, Hiruzen draws a breath from his pipe.

“And you believe you can relocate this laboratory?”

Tobi nods.

Hiruzen does, as well. He goes rummaging through his drawers for a time until he finds a map, one that he hands off to Sakumo to pin on the wall.

Tobi steps over to it and for a moment, his certainty crumbles. Sakumo isn’t worried. He steps over to the boy, kneels beside him, and points to a marked location at the center. The map is of Fire Country with Konoha at its heart. Instantly the boy’s face lights up. “This is the village,” he explains, drawing his finger south on the map to a part of the surrounding forests, “and this is where I found you.”

Tobi lifts his hand to that marker and then follows it south still, close to a smaller civilian village on the map. “Here,” he says, circling a wide berth of the area. “Somewhere here. It was underground.”

Sakumo glances over his shoulder at Hiruzen who is considering this. They exchange a knowing look. Neither spoke of it but both have formulated the same theory—that this could very well be where the missing children have been taken to. Sakumo has to remember to breathe to keep from bursting through the village gate and marching on down there with all eight of his ninken.

Tobi’s hand falls to his side and he stares narrow-eyed at the map. “He kept us in… tubes,” he says, reaching for a better word that never comes. “He monitored us daily. I don’t remember much. It’s all—” He rubs his forehead and Sakumo is reminded of Inoki’s findings, of how jumbled everything is inside this boy’s head.

“We were across from one another,” he says. “And then we weren’t. And then…”

Tobi stares down at his hands and says nothing.

Sakumo hefts himself up and rubs the boy’s back. They’ve heard enough. There’s no reason to make the boy relive any past traumas when they have the answer that they need. It’s needless suffering, he thinks, and silently expresses this to Hiruzen. “There you have it,” he says. “How soon can we get a team out, Lord Third?”

Hiruzen sighs. He looks his age again, which is never a good thing. “Rest up for the night,” he says. “Tomorrow we will move. Just until then, old friend.”

“Of course.”

He wants to go now. Hiruzen knows this, knows how ready he is to go out on his own and destroy every bit of forest until he unearths the lab and tears it apart. But he also knows that Sakumo won’t take that risk. Not now, not when this is the only real lead that he has on his son.

* * *

Tobi is dragging his feet on the walk home. Sakumo matches his speed, worried that the small confrontation in the Hokage’s office has stirred up something unpleasant. It’s been a long while since Sakumo last had to comfort a child. Kakashi wasn’t the type to need that sort of support, and even if he had been… that was so long ago now.

He leads Tobi to sit on a park bench and takes momentary leave. Tobi’s too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice until half an ice block is being dangled in front of him. He looks up questioningly at Sakumo, who can only grin in return.

“I think you deserve a treat, don’t you?”

Tobi gawks openly before taking it. There’s a smile on his face, perhaps the first full smile he’s ever worn, and rather than eat it he just stares.

“It’s going to melt,” Sakumo teases, dropping down next to him on the bench.

Tobi rolls his eyes. “I won’t let it  _ melt _ ,” he insists—it’s the loud tone this time, the one he hears most often. “I just—”

“Just?”

He shrugs helplessly as the smile slides off his face. “No one’s ever given me something like this. Or, no, my dad—” He runs a hand through his hair and groans. “My head hurts.”

Sakumo won’t press. If even a Yamanaka can’t make sense of whatever’s going on in there, then it’s no wonder the kid gets headaches. Tobi has mentioned experiments, though—that the person who took him performed tests on the abducted children—and Sakumo wishes he could ask towards that. He wants to know what was done to Tobi, and to the others—what may have been done to Kakashi and the Uchiha boy. He wonders if the duplicity of Tobi’s mind is the fault of those experiments. Fortunately, he’s not so tactless as to ask. Whether Tobi wants to open up about that or not, it isn’t Sakumo’s decision to make.

“Hey,” Tobi calls. At some point, he devours the entirety of his ice block. There’s a lingering look to Sakumo’s half and it’s easily handed over. “Why let me stay with you?”

Sakumo arches a brow. “Hm?”

Tobi averts his eyes and kicks at the dirt somewhat sullenly. “You’re waiting for Kakashi. Why open your house up to me?”

“Why not?” he asks.

“Well…”

“There’s plenty of space. You haven’t given us a name yet, so we haven’t been able to locate your family. Kakashi wouldn’t mind.”

“You sure about that?”

Sakumo ruffles his hair and earns an annoyed groan. “Positive.”

* * *

Night brings with it a pleasant chill. Sakumo hasn’t been able to sit still over the hours since their return home. He paces and fidgets and the kitchen is the cleanest it’s ever been because in the late hours he focused everything he had on polishing every surface until it shined. Then he cleaned the fridge. There was a smell coming from somewhere—it’s gone now, he’s pleased to note, but it’s not enough to pull himself from thoughts of the morning.

He needs to sleep. He knows that, he does, he just…

Can’t.

He’s reorganizing the hall closet when he hears a voice again through the wall. This time it’s not coming from the bathroom, but from the spare room he’s given to Tobi. He stops what he’s doing and hates himself even as he does so, silent as he sidles up to the door.

“—it off.”

It’s Tobi again, of course. There’s no one else it could be.

“It’s not a light switch. It doesn’t just  _ turn off _ .”

“Deactivate it, then. I don’t care what you call it, just  _ do it _ .”

“Easy for you to say, I—”

It goes silent. He cuts himself off. It appears Sakumo’s been caught eavesdropping. He moves over to the hall closet and goes back to folding blankets as though nothing ever happened. Sure enough, the door slides open a crack. Sakumo pretends not to notice. It closes again just as quickly, and the boy is none the wiser.

There’s a crazy idea forming in Sakumo’s head that is as absurd as it is uncomfortably conceivable. He’s not ready to believe it quite yet, but the tonal shifts of dialogue in Tobi’s back-and-forths are so sudden and so seamless that he’s not sure how long he can shove this idea to the back of his mind. He hopes it’s not true. He really, truly does.

Sakumo heads to bed soon after. It’s a fitful sleep. He wakes up at least once an hour, tossing and turning with increasing desperation until finally he’s had enough. He climbs out of bed and drags himself toward the kitchen in the hopes that a calming tea may ease his mind but stops midway. Tobi is sitting on the floor in the dining hall, the heels of his palms pressed up against his eyes.

“Tobi?” he calls, edging into the room. “What’s wrong? Another headache?”

“No,” he mutters, and then takes a breath. “Yes.”

That’s about as clear an answer as he’ll ever get. He grabs two glasses of water from the sink and takes a seat across from the boy, sliding one over. Tobi doesn’t move. He flinches for all of two seconds and then his head lifts, his hands going with it.

“What did you call me?”

“Oh,” Sakumo laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Little nickname I came with. If you’ve got something better, I can change it.”

Tobi purses his lips and says nothing.

Things are awkward again, which has become the norm of their few days of cohabitation. It’s inevitable, really, because this boy is always stressed over something and Sakumo’s mind is too clouded by distant thoughts to ever slice through the tension with any level of tact.

When they reach the twenty minute mark and Tobi still hasn’t moved, there is something to be concerned about. “Tobi,” he repeats carefully, “what’s wrong?”

Tobi worries his lip in the ensuing quiet. “I don’t think you can help.”

“Perhaps not,” Sakumo acknowledges. Tobi’s background and body are so wrapped up in mystery that he’s not too sure there’s anything he can do if something has gone wrong. “But at least let me try.”

Slowly Tobi’s hands come down. His eyes are closed. They stay that way for several long stretches of silence before cautiously they open. A cutting red stares back. Sakumo knows that red—sharingan red. It glows unnaturally through the darkness, two tomoe spinning in one eye and one in the other. Those eyes bring Sakumo back to a day two years ago and to a forgotten name in an old village registry, to a little girl standing before the academy with begging eyes.

This is Obito.

Obito Uchiha.

Obito notices the staring. He hurries to cover his eyes again.

“No—” Sakumo steadies himself. He pushes back the flooding of two-year-old memories and reaches across the table to take Obito’s hands in his, bringing them back down. “You’ve awakened your sharingan. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Well, no, there are a few things wrong with that. While Sakumo is no expert on the Uchiha bloodline, he’s heard tales of the lengths that some will go to awaken the sharingan eye. There are implications drawn from such a young child having that ability and none of them sit well with him.

“It won’t go away,” he says, biting back his frustration. “I feel it using up my chakra but I can’t get it to  _ stop _ .”

That’s why he’s sitting on the floor in the middle of the night with his eyes closed. Sakumo sighs, scratching his head. At times like these, he wishes he stuck closer by the Uchiha clan. These rare instances are the  _ only _ times he wishes so. Sakumo’s own abilities are indefinitely activated. His aren’t the type to use up chakra and so there isn’t much to worry over. He doesn’t have any solid advice on how to help in this situation; from what he gathers, the Uchiha can automatically activate and deactivate their dōjutsu at will. Is this what happens when the bloodline isn’t pure, or is this a byproduct of whatever Obito went through in that lab?

“Well first, calm down,” he commands. Obito gives him a look that says ‘I’ve tried that,’ but takes a breath anyway. “Is this the first time it’s activated?”

“No,” Obito mutters. “It… the other day. When I got out. It activated. I don’t know what it did, but one of the assistants—he let me out. I  _ made _ him let me out. I don’t even know if it’s supposed to do that.”

Sakumo doesn’t know, either. He supposes with a well-woven genjutsu anything is possible, though. “Do you remember how you deactivated it then?”

“No.” Obito speaks before he ever thinks about it. He rolls the thought around in his head for awhile. Then something clicks. He looks at Sakumo and like magic the red recedes until nothing remains but dark, unyielding black. He cracks a grin. “It worked,” he laughs. “Lookit that, old man, it worked!”

Sakumo’s not ready to be called an ‘old man’ at this point in his life, but he has to admit that the boy has an infectious grin. "Good job. Found your trigger?"

Obito nods. "When I heard you in the forest. It just—poof. Stopped. Like magic."

Sakumo isn't sure why hearing that knots his stomach.

* * *

Dawn breaks. It's been a long time coming. It has been one of the longest nights in all of his thirty-seven years and to see its end leaves him a mix of bitter and relieved.

Breakfast comes first. He lays out a feast this morning because he already had side dishes prepared and sets the table for his young charge. Tobi—Obito, he has to keep reminding himself—is still asleep in the other room as far as he can tell. Sakumo will relay the discovery of the boy's identity to Hiruzen after the search. For now, though, he only has one thing on his mind.

If Obito is alive then Kakashi must be, too.

Sakumo is not the type to leave without saying goodbye. He gently slides open the door to the spare room but there's no body beneath the sheets of the futon. It doesn't look like it's been touched since it was first laid out. While Obito can be, at times, a very orderly person and Sakumo would not put it past him to have straightened out the sheets after waking up, that's not what this feels like.

Sakumo frowns. Where could the boy have gone?

After checking the bathroom and the yard, Sakumo gets an idea. Like most of his ideas, he's none too fond of it.

Sakumo hesitates before the door of his son's bedroom. His mouth is dry and he stares at his feet, willing himself to just  _ do it _ . Then he hears breath. It's the smallest thing, a tiny whimper in a sea of stillness, and it's enough to break his heart. He opens the door.

There is a boy with pale skin and pale hair lying beneath the sheets of Kakashi's bed, blankets drawn up to his chin. Obito is wearing one of Kakashi's shirts, one of the ones with the attached masks that go up over his nose, and Sakumo turns away.

He's shaking.

Sakumo can't bring himself to wake the boy. He won't. He retreats from the room almost immediately and scrawls out a message on a scrap piece of paper telling Obito that he's gone to join the search. He leaves it at the breakfast table in plain sight and wastes no time making a hasty retreat out the front door.

To Sakumo in that moment, anything is better than staying here.

* * *

For Hiruzen to be joining the search it means that there’s something more to this than what’s been revealed on the surface. The Hokage walks amidst an entourage of ANBU. This unit specializes in tracking missions and they’re some of the village’s best, sure, but there are questions to be made when the Inuzuka clan isn’t brought in, as well. The Inuzuka and Hatake clans share similar traits. It was how Sakumo and his wife found commonality at first, the spark that set off a long-lasting relationship that one day gave them Kakashi. The Inuzuka are talented. For them to not be here—for there to be nothing but  _ ANBU _ here…

Sakumo looks at Hiruzen and sees a secret in those eyes.

When they reach the location that Obito pointed to on the map, the ANBU fan out. Sakumo’s approach is slower. As the rest of the team makes quick work of combing the forest, Sakumo kneels down on the earth and nicks his finger. He presses both hands to the ground and forces chakra through them. Through plumes of smoke, his summons arrive. It is they who branch off now, leaving Sakumo to wipe his blood on the leg of his pants and rise up. Hiruzen is with him still, no longer dawning the Hokage robes that weigh him down within Konoha’s walls. Hiruzen scrutinizes him, to which all he can do is smile.

“They have something to go off of this time,” Sakumo assures. “They’ll relay their findings to me soon enough, don’t you worry.”

It helps knowing that there is for sure something in the area, too.

“I trust in your skills.” At least one person still does. “Will you wait on the ground, then?”

“No,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “They’re searching for Kakashi’s scent in particular. I’ll track the boy’s. I’m the only one out of the team who knows his scent, after all, and I don’t suppose you have any Inuzuka hiding behind those masks regardless.”

A small grin tugs at the corner of Hiruzen’s mouth, drawn out by some thin amusement. “Very well.”

“There is something I would like to ask you, though.” Sakumo faces the Hokage knowing that he may not be allowed an answer. “Do you know who’s doing this?”

“I have a theory,” which is a delicate way of shutting Sakumo down. That’s fine; he won’t ask again. He just had to try, just once, for Kakashi’s sake and for Obito’s.

“Understood.”

Sakumo is a nurturing man and it is because he is nurturing that he hopes the ANBU who find the criminal first. Were it him, he’s not sure what he’ll do.

The first leg of their search is quiet. None of Sakumo’s ninken have reported back yet so the trail is still cold, but that’s fine. He doesn’t expect they’ll find much. Unless Kakashi, too, has escaped, there won’t be a trail to follow. So Sakumo places his bets on the ANBU and on himself. He starts by retracing the path he took the day that he found Obito there in the underbrush and is pleased to note that there’s still a faint trace of the boy’s scent lingering. By the luck of the Sage, it hasn’t rained. His only choice, then, is to follow it.

The scent leads him down an off-trail hike of which broken branches, disturbed leaves and impressions in the grass abound. Obito was so disoriented that first day that it doesn’t surprise Sakumo when the path takes a turn despite the boy claiming to have gone straight North from the lab; he wholeheartedly believes that was Obito’s intention, but Obito could barely walk at the time.

As the search presses on, red flags wave behind Sakumo’s eyes. There would be no telling that Obito is an Uchiha if not for the activation of his sharingan. He carries none of the markers of one, aside from perhaps the pale skin and dark eyes. The structure of his face is thinner, more angular, and perhaps those are traits of his clanless mother. Is it also her who lends him such light hair, then?

He knows now why there are no ripples in the clan over the loss of one of their own. The Uchiha are a proud bunch of fools, really, and if the boy does not carry their resemblance then he must not be theirs at all. He hates it. They have their child back and even when he’s returned to them, they won’t bat an eye.

Sakumo envies them.

The trail ends abruptly in the middle of nowhere. It stuns Sakumo for countless minutes like a douse of cold water. He shakes himself. No, this is good. This must be where Obito came up. With newfound hope, Sakumo starts tearing the place apart. He pushes aside bushes and leaves and carves up the earth with an array of jutsu until he sees it—metal poking out through the earth. He follows the line of it down, further away from the nearest trail, when he picks up traces of Obito’s scent once more.

There’s an entrance here that requires a string of earth style jutsu to reach. Sakumo can tell that’s what’s needed by the folds in the earth but he doesn’t need to go through the motions in order to get inside.

There’s a hole, sloppy and desperate, as though someone clawed their way out by force.

Sakumo isn’t one to rush things. He shrugs off his pack and ignites the signal flare within, shooting it up through the trees and into the sky. The ANBU in the area should see it. If no one else, Hiruzen will. As much as he wants his son back, Sakumo won’t enter without precautions. The moment his signal is noticed, the trackers will head his way. He doesn’t know what he’ll find in there.

The walls weep with the damp of the forest. He follows along thin hallways endlessly before he comes across the first door left ajar. It opens to a room of shelves and desks—a study, if it needed a name. The books on those shelves are worn and well-read. After ensuring there are no precautions put into place—feeling out the room for traps and looking for paper bombs, in particular—Sakumo steps over to grab one from its place. The book that he picks is one of the legends built around Hashirama Senju’s wood release which paints a dark picture in his mind. Some pages are marked—those on the ways that Lord First utilised his jutsu and the many ways it manifested. Sakumo’s pretty sure he’s unearthed one of Fire Country’s biggest mysteries. There’s a bitter feeling in knowing that he’s right.

Broken glass on the floor is his next finding. It crunches beneath his shoe and he looks down. Whatever it was is in too many pieces to really identify, but it being there at all is unsettling. Glass just left there in the middle of the floor.

Sakumo wants to look more thoroughly into the texts—there are some leatherbound journals stacked high on the desk that look like they’d be able to glean some meaning into all of this—but he won’t just sit there reading when the perimeter is not secure. Besides that, it’s not the research that he’s here for.

When he comes to the next room he must clench every muscle in his body to keep from flinging the door open and rushing in. There’s a faint glow seeping in through cracks, another door left half open, and behind it Sakumo sees something through the dark. The light already there is not enough to make out just what it is. Once he’s certain no one is left inside the room, he presses forward.

Fluid is spilled out across the floor from broken tubes— long, cylindrical chambers that seem to have ruptured from within. It washes out into the hall and carries with it the overpowering scent of chemicals. It’s all Sakumo can smell. He covers his nose when he nears the source. It’s so strong by now that if he doesn’t, it will give him a headache. Even that is not enough to push through the haze that it gives him, though. But there’s something familiar about it.

That scent trailed along with Obito that first day. It turns his stomach.

All of the machines are broken. The ones that are not physically so seem to have stopped working entirely. There’s only one at the far end of the massive space that gives off any light. Sakumo follows it.

There is a boy inside that machine. He’s small and frail-looking, perhaps only five or six years old. When he looks at Sakumo there’s something there, something distantly there.

This boy is alive. He’s not Kakashi, but he’s alive.

Sakumo doesn’t touch the machine. He doesn’t know the first thing about it or what effect messing with it will have on the boy, so he doesn’t touch it. He lights up the room with a hand sign and a flow of lightning-style to follow. A part of him wishes that he hadn’t. He sees children in some of the other tubes, too. Children in the broken tubes.

He has to look away. He’s going to be sick.

Steps out in the hall bring him out of it. A chill runs up his back as he unsheaths his tantō, holding it level before him, and he worries that it’s the monster who’s done this. He worries but he also hopes. Oh how he  _ hopes _ .

When the intruders enter the threshold with faces hidden behind painted masks, he loses the will. The ANBU search the room with slow steps but if they’re as disturbed as he is then he can’t tell behind the masks.

“Over here,” he calls, nodding up to the boy whose eyes are still transfixed to his. “This one is alive. We need to get him out of here safely.”

One of them, a woman beneath a fox mask, is the first to approach. She looks up at the child who then notices her and waves. The boy smiles. It’s slight but it’s there. “How, though?” she asks, then rounds on her team. “Do any of you know how this thing works?”

The ANBU look between one another, expecting one to come forward. No one does. Sakumo isn’t surprised; they were chosen as trackers and this is not an ANBU’s field of expertise.

She lets out an exasperated breath. “One of you notify Lord Third. He may know who to send for.”

A man in a crow mask makes a hand seal and he’s gone. She nods at the rest.

“Investigate. See if you can find anything that we can use.”

With them here, Sakumo feels a little less guilty about continuing his search. He smiles at the child one last time before he takes down the hall again, relieved when the smell fades with distance. He isn’t sure how long he could have lasted in that room, between the smell and the darkened tubes. The images he saw in there have burned onto the backs of his eyelids and he refuses to close his eyes.

That room is not the only one like it. Sakumo is pleased to note that the next is a room fully lit. The children here are  _ alive _ —two and three years old, so small and young but they’re moving and he’s endlessly relieved. He calls to one of the ANBU and points it out to them. He’s quiet about it as a precaution but no one outside of their team has shown themselves. The place looks more or less abandoned. It’s a relief.

Below the tubes, there are labels. The labels are of the day that the experiment was initiated, all roughly two to three years prior when the children would have been infants. Sakumo suspects that once they line those dates up with the long list of missing persons reports they have in Konoha’s records, they’ll see a pattern.

There are several unused rooms in this lab, but it’s not very big as a whole. He comes across a sitting area and a small kitchen, implying that whoever was here spent long stretches of time here. The main purpose of this facility is human experimentation. They expected as much long before setting out.

It’s the second-to-last room and Sakumo expects to find more of the same. This room is smaller. Only two of those tubes lie beyond the door. One is lit. Both are empty. The one that is still running has been drained and the front half of the glass swings freely from its hinge. There’s a lot going on here that doesn’t feel like the rest.

There’s a desk in the corner. Papers are strewn across it and the floor and when Sakumo picks one up, he can’t make sense of the writing. It nags at him, though, those illegible words.

Obito was kept here.

He keeps looking. There’s a height chart in the corner with three lines drawn across it. Beside that, a scale. In the first drawer of the desk he finds vials—blood, by the look of it, discarded there as though unimportant. In the second he finds a journal. This time, the writing is neat and legible in an almost fascinating way. Its careful strokes are nothing like the angry smudges on the loose papers. In the corner of every new entry, there is a date and a name. The name he sees is Obito Uchiha and Sakumo worries that what he’ll find there is everything that was done to the boy. He flips the page.

_ Kakashi Hatake. _

His heart drops. His eyes go up to the unlit machine and everything feels very, wholly wrong.

The early entries are primarily on Obito. It lists efforts to force the activation of the sharingan as well as general statistics of both boys—height, weight, handedness. They weren’t always kept here, it seems. They were confined someplace else and made to do various menial tasks for the sake of observation. Sakumo thumbs through it, unable to read each section at length without feeling sick. It goes into depth about each child’s reactions to various stimuli. Obito is the focus. Always, at first.

_ Activation of the sharingan is known to proceed in times of stress. Simulation of high-tension situations may be necessary. _

_ Fear is not enough of a motivator to awaken this dōjutsu. When threatened, the subject’s reaction is to posture. Physical pain appears to have some effect. _

_ Under extreme pain, the sharingan has not shown itself. Earlier tension showed promise but did not rise to match the increase of severity in pain. Amputation of the right humerus has not been enough of a trigger and methods of approach are to be reconsidered. _

_ The subject has shown a reaction to the other child’s pain. Further testing necessary. _

_ The stress used to activate the sharingan appears to be a selfless one. The condition must hold with it powerful emotions. It is only when the Hatake boy is injured and under threat of death that the subject is able to activate the kekkei genkai. Currently, there is one tomoe in each eye. Full maturation is required before transplant. _

Sakumo slams the book onto the floor with a growled-out curse. He hates this book. He hates it and hates it and  _ hates it more _ . And there  _ is _ more. There’s so much more but Sakumo can not bring himself to get past the first dozen pages. No, he has to. Kakashi’s whereabouts could be detailed in that book, he  _ has to _ .

But he can’t.

With venom on his tongue and blood boiling in his veins, Sakumo looks at the deactivated tube in the middle of the room. He looks at it and sees all of the darkened chambers in that first room and all of the children floating inside and he fears what it means. His fist slams against the glass but it doesn’t break.

There are steps behind him but he doesn’t care. It’s Hiruzen—he can tell by the scent and by the calm way that he walks.

Hiruzen picks up the journal and stops beside Sakumo, staring up into the still fluid of the tube. Then he, too, thumbs the pages.

“He’s not here,” Sakumo says. There’s no venom now. His anger flickers and dies like a starved flame and all he can feel is hollow.

Hiruzen hums, scrolling through the journal, reading every page in depth. “If he only needed another child to activate the sharingan, where is the point in taking Kakashi?”

Sakumo lets out a bitter noise, his forehead pressed to the glass. He closes his eyes and steadies himself. “What does it matter?”

Hiruzen sighs. “He had so many children already. Why take another when he had such a ready supply?”

Sakumo wonders that, too. He wonders why these two were kept separate from the rest. These experiments weren’t on wood release, surely, and that must be why.

But what was the goal in all of this, really?

Despite his protests, the Hokage slides the journal back into his hand and squeezes it tight.

“We will take care of the rest.”

* * *

Sakumo is home by midday. The house is quiet—empty, it seems—but he can’t bring himself to care. He shrugs off his uniform and sets the journal down on a table in the sitting room. He can’t eat. He doesn’t feel hungry. Food is like ash in his mouth and—this is so very, very familiar.

He doesn’t know what to do with himself. At first, he thinks tea is best to calm his nerves. Even that turns his stomach. There’s no cleaning to be done, no clothing to be washed, and he’s sure that he should look for Obito because it’s too quiet, or maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe the boy’s gone off to his grandmother’s. Maybe Obito is finally taking his life back.

His eyes are drawn to the book and oh how he hates Hiruzen for giving it to him. He hates himself more so for picking it back up. All he’s able to do is flip through the pages that he already read, to revisit the anger already encircling him and stew in his own personal shortcomings. Why couldn’t he have found that place two years ago? That was when the boys needed him. Not now, but  _ then _ .

Something sticks out at him, though, this second time around.

_ Amputation of the right humerus. _

That can’t be. Obito has both arms. They’re both perfectly functional, too. There could have been a medic-nin on the bastard’s team, though—someone who could work their way through such irreparable damage.

Shouldn’t there at least be a scar? A line, even thin, somewhere on the bicep or shoulder?

Sakumo thumbs further through the journal in search of answers. Tests, failures to force the sharingan into full maturation, but—

But.

On the pages about Kakashi, something else is happening.

_ “It is a shame to see a bloodline go to waste,”  _ it says.  _ “I wonder, perhaps, if there is more to be done with him.” _

That is the only line in the book written in first person. There is more after that, but it trails off the last page. There is a second journal out there somewhere—a journal with answers. But it wasn’t in the desk. It wasn’t in that room, or—the study, perhaps? There were many books in there.

But that lab was abandoned. Recently, but abandoned nonetheless. They would have taken anything important—any noteworthy advancements in their research. What is found on the sharingan in that journal reconfirms a lot of old tales but brings little else to light.

The bastard took the research with him.

Sakumo hears something out back. A young boy’s voice tugs at his focus and he wanders over to the back door. The voice is louder now, louder and oh so familiar. Obito is out back. In the backyard there stand two straw dummies and a few wooden targets. Sakumo made them for Kakashi to help with training back when he was years younger. They’re old, he’s not sure how well they’ve held up, but Kakashi still used them up until his disappearance.

“Not like that,” Obito chastises himself. “Focus. Your grip is all wrong.”

“Shut up. It’s  _ fine. _ ”

“It’s really not.”

Sakumo’s fingers curl around the edge of the door but he pauses. He listens. For the first time, he just wants to hear what these conversations Obito has with himself are about.

Something clatters to the ground—a tantō, perhaps. “What’s the point in learning kenjutsu when I have ninjutsu? It’s stupid.”

There’s an exasperated sigh. Through the paper walls, Sakumo sees the small shadow bend over and pick the weapon right back up. “Ninjutsu has its own limitations.”

Sakumo expects him to keep fighting with himself but it goes quiet.

“Right.”

“Be ready for anything.”

“Yeah. Okay. Fine,” a pause, “but I don’t have to  _ like _ it.”

Obito’s grip is firm. The stance conveyed in his silhouette is balanced, level.

Then it falters again. His hands fall to his sides. “That smell…”

Looks like it’s time for Sakumo to stop eavesdropping. A part of him feels guilty and he worries that he’s treating the boy like a commodity. He should be ashamed of himself.

“Dad’s home.”

Everything  _ stops. _

The door flies open. On the other end stands a wide-eyed boy with a black mask covering the bottom half of his face, the tantō limp in his hand. Sakumo looks, then— _ really looks. _ The expression on the boy’s face switches rapidly from shock to unease, then ends in a halfhearted glare. The boy looks to the ground.

Then back up, at Sakumo.

The boy is calm now. Sakumo is anything but.

Sakumo closes the distance between them and kneels down—and he doesn’t kneel to children, doesn’t make himself small, not normally, but he needs to see the boy head on. He puts hands on the boy’s shoulders, keeping him there. Then, when he’s sure the boy won’t run, he curls a finger beneath the hem of the mask and pulls it down.

It’s not Kakashi’s face. It’s not, but parts of it are. Kakashi’s cheekbones and chin. His mouth. And maybe that’s all it is, maybe that’s all this boy has, but it’s enough to choke up the White Fang.

His hands drop to his sides and he doesn’t know what to say. The staring gets to the boy. There are averted eyes again.

All Sakumo can manage is a broken laugh as he fights against burning eyes. “Obito?”

The boy gives him a hesitant look.

“Is—” He swallows. “Is it Kakashi in there, too?”

The boy opens his mouth to say something. No words. Two answers.

Obito nods. He’s picking apart their mannerisms well enough to know that it’s Obito who nods.

Sakumo wraps his arms around them and holds them close. Their arms go around limp around his neck and he doesn’t care that he’s crying or how uncomfortable they must be. He’s so happy and horrified and so  _ so sorry. _

“Oh Sage,” he breathes through hacked breaths and broken sobs, “you poor boys. You poor things.”

When their shoulders tremble, too, he pretends not to notice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter for this weekend! Friday we'll be wrapping up with the last chapter, which is a little different from the chapters up until now, and then Sunday I'll get the epilogue up.
> 
> Enjoy!

Sakumo has a lot to think about. He has a lot to ask, too. To keep from overwhelming the boy—boys?—from overwhelming  _ them _ , he busies himself in the kitchen. Cooking only takes up so much time, but it rattles his thoughts enough so that when he serves all of the dishes in the dining hall, he looks relatively normal on the outside. At first Obito—Kakashi?— _ they _ are fixed entirely on him. Then they notice the food. More and more is brought out, and there’s no way the two of them can eat it all. They know that. Sakumo does, too. He just doesn’t care.

They sit across from one another and pick at their food. None of them are in the mood to eat; Sakumo just needs an outlet for all this nervous energy.

He sees this boy and he sees Kakashi. He sees this boy and he sees someone else. The only thing blinding him to it before was that it just couldn’t be so. Staring back from across the table is an impossibility.

“I’m not—” The boy thinks better of it, rubbing the back of his head. His eyes shift and now all Sakumo can see is Kakashi. “I can’t remember how it happened.”

Sakumo nods. What else can he do?

“It was Orochimaru.”

He knows. Oh how he knows. It clicked recently, the bastard’s scent carrying traces on the journal. He knows and so does Hiruzen.

There’s a hunt for the sannin now, no doubt.

“You didn’t tell me,” Sakumo says, resting his chin in his hand. He can’t take his eyes off the boy. No matter the effort.

“I’m not  _ me _ ,” he mutters. “I’m not—but I  _ am _ , I—” He takes a breath. “I remember both. I know what I’m made of. But everything gets jumbled inside my head. I was Kakashi, and you’re my—you  _ were _ my—”

He’s getting frustrated with himself again. Sakumo waits it out. He knows that if this boy is anything like his son, he won’t appreciate coddling. Then again, Obito seems to enjoy it.

“And I was Obito,” he continues then, a tone shift, “an’ I lived with my grandmother an’ went to the academy. But Kashi’s a chunin. Was.  _ Was _ a chunin. And I’m always thinking two things at once and fighting with myself and the only way I can make sense of it all is—”

“For both of you to talk it out,” Sakumo continues.

“But there’s just me. There’s no ‘us’, not anymore.”

Sakumo wonders about that. No, he’s certain that there is. Everything is split—their manner of speech, their body language and even their handedness. These aren’t things that they seem to notice, however. It’s so much easier to see as an outsider looking in. Sakumo isn’t sure how to broach that topic, isn’t sure they really  _ want _ him to, so he doesn’t. Not now.

One day, Tobi will realize this on his own. One day, Tobi will understand what he is better than Sakumo ever could. For now, Sakumo is silent.

Sakumo serves the boy a little bit of everything and slides it over on a plate. Most of the dishes are Kakashi’s favourites—a resurfacing old habit that’s hard to kill. The boy is too stressed, too upset, and he doesn’t want such things to last. These are the things that eat away at you. He knows that better than anyone. “Eat,” he says, smiles. “You’re breaking my heart, ignoring all this food.”

Tobi—at this point, it’s the only name he has to call them, even if it leans closer to Obito than it does Kakashi—sighs. With a short tug, the mask settles around his neck. What a change it is from Kakashi, who never allowed his face to be seen in later years. It’s refreshing and a little bittersweet. Tobi picks at his food, almost pouting before taking his first bite.

This terrible situation is the most normal Sakumo’s felt in the past two years.

“I know what foods Kakashi likes,” he says after a time. “What about Obito?”

The boy eyes him.

“I can’t make it if I don’t know what it is.”

To his surprise, Tobi’s already halfway through his plate. After the first taste, he must have realized just how hungry he was. Or maybe he misses these home-cooked meals. “Dango,” Tobi mutters.

Sakumo arches a brow. “That’s a treat. What about real foods?”

“Everything,” he says between bites. It’s the most exasperated sound that he’s ever made. “Anything.”

“Not a picky eater, then. Good to hear. Now, Kakashi doesn’t cook. I’ll assume you learned with Obito’s memories.”

A vague, noncommittal shrug. That’s fine—he has his answer.

* * *

The report to Lord Third is as painful as it is confusing. Sakumo isn’t sure that Hiruzen believes what he says but he says it anyway. It’s a late-night visit sometime after dinner and he keeps it as short as a properly-made report will allow. There are words, not all of them good, and he nods his head in understanding.

A Yamanaka will make a visit come morning. Sakumo dreads it. He bets Tobi will, too.

When he returns home the house is dark, shadows stretching through the paper walls with moon fall. His first stop is Kakashi’s bedroom. He sees a small body beneath the covers, sheets drawn up to the chin. Pale hair and pale skin. This time, the sight brings with it relief.

* * *

Inoki doesn’t look happy to be here. He’s a man of masks and hides it well from the ten-year-old staring back at him, but Sakumo has known him long enough to see the tension on his face. Poor guy. He probably thought that he washed his hands of the matter the other night but Hiruzen has other plans.

It’s Kakashi that Sakumo sees then, sitting on the chair back-straight and calm, a dull eye watching the interrogator. He knows what this is. They all do.

This test is just as much for Sakumo as it is for Tobi.

Inoki takes a seat across from Tobi and leans over the table. His smile is tight-lipped. “Do you remember when you visited me?”

Tobi nods.

“I’m going to do exactly what I did then. Your—” Inoki looks to Sakumo for guidance and finds none. Oh how it frustrates him. “Sakumo is going to ask you questions while I search your memories. I just need you to relax while he does so. Does that sound good?”

Again, Tobi nods.

“Good.”

Inoki wastes no time. A series of seals and gestures weave a pattern in his hands. Everything goes quiet. Sakumo knows that’s the signal that it worked, that it’s active, and sighs.

“Sorry to put you through this again, kiddo. Close your eyes for me.” Tobi does. Now it’s Sakumo’s turn to work. He tries to draw up obvious questions first—answers that should be obvious to the real Kakashi. It doesn’t seem fair to ask only questions about one half of the boy—and really, it isn’t—but there are so few things that he knows about Obito. “How old were you when you made chunin?”

Tobi makes a face. Sakumo’s already made a mistake. “But I—”

“When  _ Kakashi _ made chunin.”

“Six.”

Sakumo nods. There was no hesitation. “And Obito—”

“Is enrolled in the academy,” Tobi continues. His tone shifts. This is Obito talking now, fighting to keep his eyes closed, a grin tugging at his lips. “Rin’s there, too. Or—is she? She didn’t graduate without me, did she?”

Sakumo leans over to ruffle his hair, earning very  _ loud _ protests. “Not until next year. You’ll catch up.”

“Oh.” He breathes a sigh of relief. “Well good, ‘cause I don’t wanna fall behind. Bakashi’s already a  _ chunin _ , which is just  _ stupid. _ ”

“He  _ is _ rather young.”

“Six.  _ Six, _ Dad. That’s just stupid. What kind of six-year-old becomes a ninja?”

“Focus,” Inoki bites out. Sakumo never knew that he could still speak while the jutsu was activated; the poor guy must be dealing with a whole whirlwind of unimportant thoughts to make him do so.

Sakumo clears his throat. Tobi’s eyes are open. The boy is immediately shamed. He squeezes them shut again, red-faced and slouched.

What to ask next, then?

“What’s Kakashi’s family name?”

“Hatake.”

“Obito’s?”

“Uchiha.”

“What about his parents?”

There’s a vague, noncommittal shrug. Tobi fists the fabric of his pants. “Never met ‘em. Grandma says that Mom was really pretty. She died when I was two. Dad—” He frowns. “Dad was…”

There’s a snag. A glance over at Inoki shows that something odd is going on inside that boy’s mind. Obito Uchiha’s father died shortly after his birth. He shouldn’t remember anything about the man—it should be an easy answer.

Tobi opens his eyes again and blinks. “Well, you’re right here.”

There it is.

Sakumo strides over and pats the boy’s head. He thinks he can unravel this for Inoki. It shouldn’t be hard. “Who am I, Obito?”

“Sakumo,” the boy supplies, then frowns. Thinks. “...Kakashi’s dad.”

“And?”

“And my dad was…” He sinks into his seat, sullen and bitter. “He was never there.”

“He died when you were young, didn’t he?”

“Yeah…”

Looking back to Inoki, everything must have smoothed itself out. This session is looking to be a long one. Sakumo takes a seat and settles in. With everything back on track and with Sakumo now confident that he can guide Tobi to answer correctly whenever his memories start to get muddied, he has a topic to broach, something that he’s been wondering for two long, bitter years. “I’m going to assume that Obito is the one that Orochimaru targeted because of the Uchiha blood he carries. I’d like to know how Kakashi fits into all of this, exactly. Were both of you targeted?”

“No,” he says, closing his eyes again. Focusing. He’s using a tone so achingly familiar. A little more mature, a little older, a little weathered, but so much of Kakashi is still reflected back. “I was nearby and tried to intervene. Our skills weren’t comparable to Orochimaru’s. He overpowered us. I believe I was taken because I was a witness.”

“I see.” He thought as much.

“At first, he was only after the sharingan,” he continues. “He only took an interest in me when he got bored. Obito and I suffered severe injuries by the time his focus shifted. He mentioned that he couldn’t transplant the sharingan until it was fully mature, but Obito hadn’t realized by that point that it was activated.”

“You saw, though,” Sakumo continues. “From where he was keeping you.”

Tobi doesn’t answer. He takes a breath and folds his arms and Sakumo thinks that maybe this is as far as they should go.

“He wondered,” Tobi says, his voice a feeble shudder, “if he could put us back together.”

Orochimaru better hope that ANBU finds him first.

* * *

Tobi doesn’t like going out. This isn’t the first time Sakumo has noticed, but it’s the most obvious.

While Inoki is off compiling his findings from their two hour session into an organized report, they’re given a few days’ solace. Sakumo has no missions. It was six months after Kakashi’s disappearance that he was put back out on the field. It was a gift, really—a way to get him outside of his own head. And it worked. When he was out on missions, there was no time to focus on the empty house back home or the stunted progress in his one-man search. The war was long and tired and so very,  _ very _ sad, but it gave him an outlet. It gave him purpose.

He’s glad to have reprieve now, though, with his entire reality pulled out from under him.

When asking Tobi to go out with him, he’s met with sidelong glances. There’s silence, too, and that’s all Kakashi. They need groceries, though. Sakumo could use the extra hands—that’s the excuse that sympathizes with Obito. There’s groaning and fussing and complaints abound, but Tobi’s getting up, getting dressed. Getting his shoes on.

Tobi is a good kid.

The market is alive with sights and smells. It’s the smells that draw Tobi in. Obito doesn’t have the same reserves that Kakashi does, having lived his whole life with a keen sense of smell, and his eyes dart from one food stall to the next. But he never moves from Sakumo’s side. He straightens his mask, ducks his head, and presses in closer. Tobi does not want to be seen. Tobi is  _ scared _ to be seen.

Sakumo doubts that he’s worried Orochimaru will find him again.

Over two years of consistent successes and with a positive track record working its way back into his file, the White Fang is no longer the shunned former hero of the second war. Sakumo’s return to normalcy may have helped with that. He stops at a vegetable stand and converses with the middle-aged woman running it, checking over the produce and smiling when she glances at the boy.

Tobi, to his credit, is polite. He affords the woman respect in a short bow, even as his skin prickles at having eyes on him.

“My, what a good child. Is this your nephew?” she asks.

Sakumo has to admit, the thought is amusing. “Nothing quite like that.”

Tobi’s attention is drawn to the civilian crowds strewn about the street. He leans back, narrows his eyes, and the sharingan activates. He’s following something, a pattern of movement—a point of interest just beyond the current of bodies along the road.

“Really, now?” The woman looks between the two of them with a critical eye. “He looks so much like you.”

“Well, I’d think he would,” Sakumo laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “He  _ is _ my son, after all.”

The sharingan recedes and Tobi’s attention is on him. It’s cute, the mix of confusion and embarrassment that manages to show behind his mask.

The woman’s smile fades. All that she leaves behind is a trailing thread of pity. “Oh,” she says, hushed. “Is… is that so?”

Sakumo knows how it looks. But Sakumo has been on the wrong side of so many looks that they no longer cripple him the way they once did. He smiles at her and nods to the boy, paper bags hanging from his arms. “We should get going, you think?”

“...Yeah.”

Sakumo leaves a tip. He’s in such high spirits that he can bring himself to do nothing else.

They wander further down the path until the crowds thin and they’re nearing the park by the academy. It’s a small thing, the one that Kakashi used to play at all of the time, and they take a seat on a bench. This time when Sakumo leaves, he comes back with dango. The way Obito shines through then, eyes lighting up, he should have bought ten more.

Tobi usually wolfs down his food—a trait very much leaning towards Obito rather than Kakashi—but this time, he’s savouring it. There are children many years younger playing on the swings, chasing one another in the sand, looking for all the world like it’s the best day of their lives. Tobi isn’t watching them, though. Tobi’s eyes fall farther, past the park gates. His mind is elsewhere.

“Who did you see back there?” Sakumo asks, making himself comfortable as he leans into the wooden back of the bench. “Must’ve been someone important for you to follow them with your sharingan.”

Tobi reddens and looks instead at his treat. “You saw that?”

“You were being a bit obvious.”

Tobi groans. As though to bury his shame, he downs the rest of the dango in one big mouthful. He barely chews. The moment it’s gone, he’s calm. Obito is taking a backseat, perhaps too embarrassed to speak openly about it. Sakumo’s noticed that both parts of Tobi like to push the hard conversations onto one another. While Sakumo never raised Kakashi to avoid his problems, he begrudgingly admits that he’d be tempted to do the very same.

“Rin Nohara,” Tobi says. “She was out buying clothes.”

“Was she, now?”

Tobi sets him beneath a dull glare. “Dad,” he warns.

Sakumo raises placating hands. Tobi’s more sensitive to teasing than he expects. It’s only when Tobi’s eyes are off of him that he cracks a smile. “Why not go say hi?”

“Like this?” Tobi glares down at his hands. “She wouldn’t recognize me.”

“That’s not—”

“You didn’t.”

Tobi is not wrong. But, in some ways, maybe he is.

Sakumo places a firm grip on the boy’s shoulder and goes ignored. He sighs. “Talk to her next time. Strike up a conversation. The important part is that you make an  _ effort. _ ”

Tobi closes his eyes and heaves a sigh. There’s resignation in the slant of his shoulders and Sakumo would be proud, if only his boy wasn’t so stubborn.

* * *

Konoha has not been without a hero in absence of the White Fang. While Sakumo was stewing in a sea of regrets and self pity, a new name dominated the third shinobi war.

Minato is a man of easy smiles and practiced charm. He is young, so very young when compared to the aging White Fang, but his demeanor does not betray his age. Minato is a name where legends are born. Sakumo looks at that face and he knows that one day, this kid will be someone important. This upstart will outshine him and he looks forward to it.

Minato smiles and he smiles back as he toes into the Hokage's office. Hiruzen is there, looking somewhat less ancient and a little more youthful, which is a pleasant surprise given the circumstances.

Orochimaru has fled. ANBU lost his trail. The search won’t end here, though—not by a long shot.

“Lord Third,” he greets, using whatever formality he can muster in the presence of the third party also awaiting him in this room. “You wished to see me?”

Hiruzen lets out a sigh and extinguishes his pipe. It’s cast to the wayside and he produces a file from a drawer. The pages within are fanned out across the desk and he nods both men closer. “These are the findings from the lab,” he says. “The identities of the children we retrieved have been found, more or less.”

The documents are paired up, files on the rescued children together with missing persons reports from the most recent few years. These are the children from that second room—the one still alight with the glow from the machines.

“We have affirmed the identities of some of the deceased, as well,” Hiruzen adds, “but we’ve yet to find the family of one boy.”

“The one from the first wave,” Sakumo continues. He isn’t surprised by that. Unlike the second set, the children from the first had no dates written down. They were marked only by numbers. Surely they should be able to identify him some other way?

“The boy is seven, now. He has spent many years away from his family, and from the village. Re-integrating him into the village will not be easy. To make matters worse,” Hiruzen leans forward and taps one page. There’s a photo attached and Sakumo recognizes the child. He sees familiarity in those bizarre, hollowed eyes. “It appears the experimentation done on him was successful, to a degree. This child can use Wood Release.”

Sakumo should be impressed—it’s a skill not seen since the time of the First Hokage—but all he feels is dread. He knows what this means for the boy, knows where a path with skills like those will lead him, and he promises to fight with Hiruzen over this for as many years as it takes to grant this boy a choice.

“He isn’t the reason I called you here,” Hiruzen says.

Minato places a hand on the desk. It’s the first warning that Sakumo gets and when next he looks up, it’s to Minato’s smiling face. “Lord Hokage is sending me in search of the remaining sannin. I’ll be away delivering missives to both in regards to this matter. In my absence, my place will need to be filled.”

Sakumo is expected to return to work. He nods absently, even as his thoughts fall to his  _ own _ boy back home. For the better part of the past two weeks, Tobi has stuck by his side, never left alone for a moment too long. He doesn’t want to leave the boy alone. He doesn’t think it will be good for Tobi—for Kakashi, or for Obito. But it isn’t really his choice to make, is it? “Understood.”

Minto straightens, the smile falls, and he casts his eyes to the faces on the documents. “There is something else that needs to be addressed, I’m afraid.”

Sakumo frowns. “And what’s that?”

“That boy,” Hiruzen says, fingers steepled and eyes hard. “The one you call Tobi. There is the matter of his reintegration, as well.”

Sakumo does not like where this is headed. “He’s my son,” he warns.

“He is also someone’s grandchild.”

It’s true. It is more than just Kakashi who makes up Tobi’s whole. Sakumo knows that. He knows that, he does, and yet can’t bear the thought of giving custody of the child to someone else. Still, what can he say? Hiruzen is not wrong. Minato, giving him that same, pitiful look, is not wrong. So he clenches his fists, grits his teeth and nods.

Hiruzen pushes his elbows off the desktop and leans back, turning in his chair to stare out the window. “However,” he cautions, shaking his head, “I don’t believe there is anyone better suited to caring for the child as he is now. You’ve handled yourself well, Sakumo. I can only wish you the best.”

Try as he may, Sakumo can’t smile. He’s grateful, really he is, but the words stick with him. Tobi  _ is _ someone else’s grandchild. Tobi has family that is not his own and Tobi may very well pine for that family. It’s a hollow victory.

“Inoki also noted to me that the boy has activated the sharingan,” Hiruzen says.

“Yes,” Sakumo sighs. “He has. Will that pose a problem?”

“The Uchiha are protective of their dōjutsu. They won’t take kindly to it being in possession of an unknown.”

“Then we relay the truth,” Sakumo says. “If it comes into question, we explain how Obito Uchiha is connected to him. It’s all we can do. We can’t ask Tobi to hide it forever—if he’s to ever be a shinobi of the Leaf again, there will be a time when he needs it.”

“Which is why it must be you to care for him,” Hiruzen says. He gestures for silence with one hand and rubs soothing circles into his temple with the other. “The Uchiha are very set in their ways, old friend. I would not put it past one to demand the eyes be returned to the clan. He will need protection from that, come what may.”

“Of course.”

“And,” Hiruzen sighs. There’s more. There’s always more. Rather than continue, he casts a long glance at Minato, who stiffens in place.

Minato clears his throat. If Sakumo didn’t know any better, he’d think that Hiruzen was grooming the lad for the role of the next Hokage. “We intend on holding a memorial service for all of Orochimaru’s victims. Since it’s been decided that you’ll take on the role of little Tobi’s guardian… we wanted to ask what you’d like us to do about Kakashi and Obito’s involvement in it.”

Oh.

Sakumo covers his mouth with his hand and breathes. He’s not ready to take that step, but he has to be.

* * *

Kakashi holds his father’s hand as they gather for the service at Konoha Memorial. He looks around at the drawn faces of the crowds and isn’t sure what to expect. He remembers many times over his two years of confinement when the corpses of children were carried through the open hallway door. No matter how many times he saw it, it never got easier. The images were there every time he closed his eyes—plants bursting through a young girl’s skull, branches breaking through her sockets, a boy whose left side was reduced to a wooden husk. He thought one day it would be he or Obito being carried out. He thought one day they would die.

Kakashi wants to honour them in any way that he can.

_ “They were younger than us.” _

Obito’s right. They were always younger. Out of every child abducted, Kakashi and Obito were the oldest. They were Orochimaru’s riskiest experiment.

_ “It’s not fair.” _

No, it’s not. Kakashi closes his eyes and pushes back Obito’s voice. He’s in control simply because Obito does not want to be. Kakashi gets stuck with all of the hard situations. He wants to call it unfair, but he really doesn’t mind.

If nothing else, he likes being able to hold his father’s hand freely like this.

Dad looks down at them and smiles. It’s a tired smile, but Kakashi relishes it. Two years ago, Dad never smiled like that. There was a time that now feels so far off when he and Dad never acknowledged one another, where he was bitter and his father was sad and neither of them knew what to do about it.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Dad,” he warns.

His father falters a bit, looking away. “Alright, then.”

There are so many people—too many, really, too many crowds. They gather around the altar at the front, some weeping, others sharing their sympathies, and it’s not fair. It’s not okay for there to be so much  _ hurt _ .

The village gates permit the families of the deceased to be here today. It’s not hard to guess at which ones are family and which are here to simply honour the dead.

He can’t see the front, too many bodies blocking the way. He wants to, though. He wants to pay his respects properly.

_ “Get up closer already, jeez.” _

Kakashi rolls his eyes.  _ Fine, _ he’ll listen, if only to get the part of him that is Obito to give his mind the illusion of peace. He makes to maneuver through the crowds but the hand on his keeps him still and he looks back. Dad is no longer smiling.

“Are you sure?” Dad asks, and Kakashi is confused.

He nods anyway.

When his father releases him, he weaves his way through bodies twice his height until he’s standing before the altar.

Two photos stare back at him. Two faces, two  _ achingly familiar faces _ . His head throbs. His thoughts go clouded again, meshing with Obito’s, twisting and knotting into one cohesive rhythm and he  _ hates _ it and hates  _ everything _ because  _ they’re not dead _ —

He reels himself back. He takes a breath.

_ “Obito,” _ he cautions, and it’s so hard not to say it out loud but he can’t, not here, not at a memorial for  _ them _ .  _ “Don’t.” _

_ “But they’re—” _ He feels ripples of emotions that belong to his other half circulating through him. The stinging of white-hot tears come next.  _ “We’re not dead. Tell them! Tell them that we’re not—” _

There are hands on either of his shoulders and he looks up. Sakumo is staring ahead, staring at the altar, at the face of Kakashi and the face of Obito and he’s not looking at  _ them _ , not now, not when his eyes are so drawn to those pictures. He resents it. He resents the longing in Dad’s eyes every time that he sees Kakashi—

Kakashi takes a breath and regains himself. Dad notices him staring and they share a glance before he can no longer manage to keep his father’s gaze.

The memorial is for them, too. And that’s okay. They know that they can’t return to the way that they were. What’s done is done.

Dad—Sakumo—calls them ‘Tobi’ now. In a way, maybe this… this…  _ whatever it is _ … it’s closure. For them, as much as it is for Sakumo.

Sakumo takes a knee behind him, holding him steady, mouth by his ear. “So that’s what Obito looks like?” he whispers.

They nod.

“I haven’t seen a photo before,” he says. He was probably too focused on Kakashi to ever bother with Obito. That leaves him feeling bitter—both sides of him, not just the one. “It’s Obito’s eyes you have. His eyes and his smile.”

Tobi closes his eyes and rubs the back of his neck almost sheepishly. He’s sure why that makes him so embarrassed.

Kakashi’s been drawn in again. It’s a pattern that they’ve fallen to as of late, where their thoughts and feelings overlap and everything, for just the briefest of moments, feels normal. It never lasts, no, but while it does, well…

It’s nice. The headaches stop and it’s  _ nice. _

When he opens his eyes again, it’s to a small girl at the foot of the altar. She carries in her arms a vast bouquet of all sorts of flowers and places it at the base of the photos. She’s crying—Tobi can hear her hiccuping breaths even from a distance—and wiping her eyes. There is a pair of goggles in her hand, hanging there limply. He recognizes those goggles.

Obito pries his way into control. He takes a faltering step closer but Sakumo’s there, holding onto him, keeping him steady.

“Not now,” Sakumo whispers. “This isn’t the place. Next time.”

Obito bites his lip and nods. He forces himself still as Rin turns around and walks back into the crowd with bloodshot eyes and a heavy heart.

He misses Rin. Oh how he misses Rin. But he’s not a little kid anymore; he’ll grit and bear it.

_ “Hey, Kashi. Do you remember Rin?” _

_ “Ah. Your friend.” _

_ “No, I mean…” _

He draws up memories by force to a time before Kakashi ascended the ranks to chunin at an ungodly rate and it tugs at something from within them. There were times—for just a short while, just the briefest of moments—when the three of them were together. Maybe they didn’t get along and maybe they weren’t worth remembering to Kakashi, but—

_ “No. I remember.” _

Oh. Huh.

_ “Dad probably does, too. He just can’t think of it right now. There’s too much going on and he never learned your names.” _

He looks over his shoulder to Sakumo whose eyes are transfixed to the portraits.

Smiling, though bittersweet.

* * *

Tobi groans, loudly and dramatically, because Obito has primary control. He roll their eyes heavenward, his mask sitting around his neck, and drops down backwards onto the mattress. Sakumo’s at the door, standing there with his arms crossed, looking vaguely unimpressed. Tobi doesn’t care.

“Why do I gotta go back to the academy?” he whines, and Kakashi is somewhat ashamed from within but Obito can’t be bothered to care. “I’m a  _ chunin _ . I’m past that.”

“No,” Sakumo sighs, “ _ Kakashi _ is a chunin. Obito is a student.”

“Then meet halfway and make  _ Tobi _ a genin.”

Sakumo pinches his brow and Tobi’s a mix of amused and ashamed because Kakashi’s never seen his father like that. Kakashi was always the perfect son. He behaved, he excelled at everything he did…

_ “Way to stroke your own ego, Bakashi.” _

Sakumo tosses a bag onto the bed right next to them and Tobi eyes it. Already packed. There’s an hour until classes start. If he can just wait out that hour, then…

“I see Obito is choosing to be difficult today,” Sakumo says, and it stings a bit. He’s gotten better at prying them apart through observation alone.

“What of it?”

“Well, assuming you won’t let Kakashi and I talk this out…” The bed sinks down and Tobi looks up. Sakumo is seated on the edge, arms crossed and eyes focused. “Let’s talk. You and me. Make your case, Tobi.”

Tobi pouts. Now that he’s put on the spot, he isn’t sure how to verbalize his own protests. “I—” he starts, then thinks better of it. “I have all of Kakashi’s memories and experience. I shouldn’t have to do it over again.”

Sakumo hums, nods. “True,” he says, “but you also have a lot working against you. You’ve been gone for two years now. Tobi didn’t exist until recently, correct?”

He lets out a vague noise of affirmation. They aren’t sure when they merged, exactly. Most of their time after the initial sharingan tests is vague in their mind but the first time they realized what happened was during their escape. No, even then, they didn’t realize. Not really. Everything was so jumbled together that they didn’t know who—or what—they were. It was only in the hospital, Sakumo sitting with them, asking them questions, that they started making sense of themselves and of the world around them.

“This is a new body,” Sakumo says. “ _ Your own body. _ It is going to take adjustments. We can’t put you back out onto the field until we know for certain you’ve adjusted. Why not treat this down time as a chance to sort yourself out?”

Tobi groans, but Sakumo has a point. They’ve had to make adjustments as they go. Walking was hard because they didn’t know how to both keep control at once—and really, Tobi isn’t sure both sides of  _ them _ are even real. He theorizes that the Kakashi and Obito in his mind are just impressions of his memories. He can’t be sure. Either way, when both sides disagree, everything gets more difficult. They have to work out a system for just about everything that they do. Kakashi is often willing to take a back seat. He observes and he’s okay with that. But Obito…

Obito’s not. Obito feels guilty, not giving Sakumo much time with his son. Obito hates inserting himself where he’s not needed.

_ “Do it,” _ Kakashi urges.  _ “We can use this time to train. You’re not good at anything, honestly.” _

_ “Shut up, Bakashi! You’re talking to the next Hokage, y’know!” _

_ “If  _ we’re _ going to be the next Hokage, all the more reason for us to train.” _

Oh. Well, he has a point

Tobi lets out the loudest groan and rises up like a zombie. He glares dully at Sakumo, sullen and bitter, and hops off the bed to search for clothes in the closet. “Alright,” he grumbles, “fine. But I don’t have’ta like it.”

Sakumo ruffles his hair and it’s so embarrassing a gesture that it makes Obito want to hide.

* * *

Tobi stands before a class of twenty-three of his peers. Whispers about him are already spreading like wildfire, but it’s Kakashi in control. Rumors flow off of Kakashi like water. It wasn’t always like that. Those same whispers tore down his father and almost severed their bond years ago and he knows that they can very well do so again. But they have the power to stop it and by now, Kakashi is past the point of letting them get to him. That’s why Obito so easily relinquishes control.

The instructor introduces him as Tobi Hatake which sends alarm bells throughout the class. He twitches. It’s fine. He won’t let it get to him—he’s just not so sure he should have gone with Kakashi’s last name. But Uchiha would have been worse. There really is no better option. Tobi looks on with cool indifference as he scans the faces of his classmates one by one. He recognizes most of them. He’s in Obito’s class—the grade he would be in had Orochimaru not ruined everything. Rin is there. His heart races in his chest at the sight of her. She’s looking out the window, her head propped up on her arm, not paying him a moment of her time.

Tobi arches a brow when, at the opposite end of the classroom, he spots Maito Gai. There’s something odd here, too. Gai is staring down at his desk, tapping the wood, looking like he wants to be anywhere but here. That’s not the Gai he knows—not the Gai that Kakashi remembers. This is a whole different beast.

They’re not really sure what to do with what they’re seeing.

“Tobi?”

Tobi blinks. He pulls from his thoughts long enough to give the instructor a glance and then sighs. Right. It’s time for his self introduction.

“Tobi Hatake,” Kakashi says as though it were the most boring day of his life. Then, after a thought, adds, “The future Hokage.”

His inner Obito is giddy just hearing it.

No one believes those words and that’s fine. He’s not sure, either—the Kakashi side. Obito is dead set on seeing his dream through whether he’s in his own body or not, but Kakashi sees enough of Obito to think that it’s a stretch.

He’s seated next to Rin. It sends his heart racing—Obito’s influence, naturally. Kakashi doesn’t dislike Rin, per se. A lot of Obito’s love of the girl is bleeding into him and it’s a pain. But he can’t say that he cares too deeply about her presence, either. She’s just… there, just like the rest of the class.

Rin doesn’t notice his at first. Eventually she spares his a cursory glance, mutters a short ‘hello’, but that’s all he is to her. She doesn’t recognize him.

_ “Well, if we didn’t wear that stupid mask—” _

_ “I’m not taking it off.” _

_ “But if we didn’t—” _

_ “She wouldn’t recognize you, idiot.” _

_ “Sakumo says we have my eyes!” _

_ “Well, yeah—we have the sharingan. We didn’t get that from me.” _

_ “And my smile—” _

Tobi sighs. He can’t help it. Obito is exhausting at the best of times.

Kakashi’s main interest is in Gai. It’s odd. If anyone were to approach him, it would be Gai. But Gai isn’t even sparing them a cursory glance.

This whole class is a big waste of time and they have to remind themselves that it’s only temporary. In no time at all, they’ll be back on the field.

Provided Obito doesn’t slow them down.

* * *

When he gets home that night, the house is empty. It’s dark. It never is, not usually, because Sakumo is home at all hours. Sakumo is back to missions now, though, and so Tobi is left to his own devices. This is fine. He doesn’t feel disappointment at the empty dining table or the echoing stillness of each room. He’s not bitter as he cooks himself up a sloppy dinner. Kakashi absorbs knowledge like a sponge and Obito’s cooking is palatable at best, so it’s no surprise he prepares the dish with a cookbook in hand.

Once dinner’s over, Kakashi demands that he cleans his dishes. There’s the most half-hearted of fights between the two of them before Tobi gets to it, in which case both are fairly certain they’re fighting out of loneliness rather than actual need.

“It’s quiet,” Obito murmurs, giving voice in the silence.

“Mm,” Kakashi affirms. “Dad said that he had a mission.”

“I know what you know, Bakashi.” They both know that. They’re empty words, really. Normally they have more to fuss over, and while they could speculate on their classmates, neither wants to. They’re not sure that they want to know what’s going on with Gai and Rin. They’re pretty sure that they can figure it out. “Hey… what was that thing from the other day? The kenjutsu thing you wanted me to practice?”

“It was just a basic stance,” Kakashi shrugs. “Your form is terrible.”

“Well,  _ sorry _ . I didn’t have a dad to show me that kind of stuff. When I was young, Dad was always out on missions—”

Tobi frowns. No, that’s not right.  _ Sakumo _ was always out on missions. Throughout the chaos of fighting a war, Sakumo still made time for his son. Kakashi knew what lengths his father went to. He appreciated it, even if it was silent and distant.

Obito takes control then. He slouches, head hung low, a hand to his forehead as the headaches come and he fights through the fog to his own truths. “...I didn’t have a dad,” he confirms, scuffing the floor with his sandal. It’s been hard for him. It gets harder every day. The longer he spends in that house, the more he feels that he’s losing of himself. The closer he gets to Sakumo, the more he slips up. Sakumo is Sakumo. Sakumo is  _ not _ Dad. By thinking like that, he’s only hurting himself in the long run.

Kakashi wants to protest, to say that he’s wrong. Dad cares about the both of them. Tobi is his son, not just Kakashi, and Obito wants to believe that. He really,  _ truly _ does.

But every time he starts, he sees Dad at Konoha Memorial, eyes transfixed to the photograph of a son he’ll never get to see.

A plate slips from his fingers and shatters across the ground. Tobi stares at it for what feels like eons before bending down to pick it up, but a spike of pain shoots through his head and he hisses against it. For just a moment, his vision clouds. Tobi get episodes like this from time to time.

He needs to move. Moving helps.

The plate is left forgotten on the kitchen floor as he staggers from one room to the next, then out into the world.

* * *

Sakumo's first mission is local, which he is grateful for because it means that he gets to return home the following day. He doesn't look forward to the next, which looks to be a week's travel round trip—and that's if things on the battlefield pan out well. So rarely do they ever go well.

He isn't thinking about that. Right now, he's thinking of the boy waiting for him back home. He's too late to make breakfast—arriving early in the day means that filing his report takes up his morning—but lunch is still on the table. He isn't sure exactly what he'll make; it's anyone's guess what Tobi took from the fridge for his meals. But Sakumo will make it work. He always does.

The house is empty. This would be fine if classes were running today… but they're not.

All he sees is Kakashi's back through the kitchen window, a memory ingrained in his mind for two long, bitter years.

Not again. Not  _ ever _ again.

Sakumo is out the door again before ever taking off his shoes. He scents the air and thank the Sage, he smells them. Tobi’s scent is all over the property and there are throngs of it in the surrounding streets as well, now that the boy’s in school, but one trail stands out amongst the rest. It’s a trail leading in the direction of the Uchiha district. As Sakumo follows it, he wonders if maybe he shouldn’t—if Tobi rather return to another life, if he’s missing his grandmother. Sakumo won’t blame him.

The last thing that he wants is to get in that child’s way.

Sakumo makes the selfish decision to follow. If nothing else, he needs to make sure the boy is alright.

The trail stops just short of the Uchiha district and Sakumo drags his feet. There are a few houses lined up on a few different streets here—civilian housing, he knows, as it’s mostly elderly people living in the area. Retirees, perhaps, but no active shinobi. It’s an odd place to find himself, even odder for the boy, if Sakumo didn’t already have some inclination on why Tobi came to this place.

What should he do when the trail ends? Leave? Knock on the door?

Neither, apparently. As he rounds a bend in the road, he sees the boy wrist-deep in soil. Tobi kneels on the cobblestone paths surrounding the house with a garden shovel, a few flower bulbs and some mulch scattered around him. His mask sits around his neck and there’s a smile on his face. He doesn’t notice Sakumo but will if Sakumo gets closer. So Sakumo stops, watches.

An elder opens the front door, a tray of tea in her hand, and she offers it to Tobi. Tobi’s grinning, wiping the sweat off his brow and his hands on his pants as he goes to take it. They’re talking but Sakumo can’t make out the words. Eventually, Tobi sits on the porch steps with the cup in hand. The elder—Obito’s grandmother—goes back inside.

Tobi sees him then and smiles, waving Sakumo over.

Sakumo arches a brow in his approach. The flower bed by the house is freshly planted, all done by hand. Tobi’s covered head to toe in dirt—it’s on his skin, in his hair, and it shows impossibly well over all of that pale.

“You’ve been busy, I see,” Sakumo breathes. It’s Obito looking through those eyes right now. He can see a light so impossibly fond within them.

Tobi grins, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “I got a bit lonely,” he confesses. “I used to help Grandma garden a lot. She has a bad back.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.” Sakumo takes a seat beside the boy, ruffling his hair. It’s so easy to embarrass Tobi, really. “You’re a good kid.”

Tobi’s red-faced, ducking beneath Sakumo’s hand as he stares ahead. The smile fades. “I knew she wouldn’t recognize me,” he says. “But, it’s… it’s nice to see her again either way, y’know?”

“I know.”

Sakumo doesn’t like to wonder about how hard this is for Tobi, or how painful it can be for the pieces that make him up. He can’t imagine the loneliness that Kakashi and Obito suffer every time they go unrecognized by a familiar face. Maybe Sakumo’s a coward. Maybe there was once a time when he was a better man. Maybe the White Fang of three years ago would have confronted this problem without hesitation.

Sakumo used to be so very good at confrontation. He wonders if it’s like muscle memory, if it will all come rushing back to him with a little prodding. He wonders if Tobi needs that from him.

Tobi hops to his feet, empty teacup in hand. “I’m gonna say goodbye. Be right back.”

“Take your time.”

Tobi doesn’t. He’s in and out in less than two minutes and the two of them make their way back to the Hatake estate. It’s a silent walk for the most part, Tobi’s hand in his, and it feels nostalgic. Sakumo used to walk like this with Kakashi everywhere they went. Kakashi was younger then, of course. Smaller. Sakumo would oftentimes carry the boy on his shoulders as they ran errands around the village. It’s different now. He knows that those days are gone and that he’ll never get them back, and it’s sad. It’s downright heartbreaking if he thinks about it too hard. But…

“Grandma has my picture up on the altar with Mom and Dad,” Tobi says. “Like you have Kakashi’s.”

Sakumo heaves a heavy breath and nods. “It’s something to remember you by.”

“I was right there.”

“I know.”

“And I couldn’t—” He bites his lip, tightening his grip on Sakumo’s hand. “I couldn’t  _ say it _ . ‘I’m not dead, Grandma! I’m right here!’ Why is that so hard?”

“You never told me,” Sakumo offers. “I don’t think you intended to.”

Tobi hangs his head and hunches his shoulders. Their crawling steps fall short until the two of them are standing just outside the doors of the Hatake estate.

Sakumo sighs. He doesn’t take a knee with children, not normally—except that this child, in particular, has been an exception to that rule ever since Day 1. So he takes a knee and looks up at Tobi. Tobi’s looking anywhere but him and he’s sure that soon Obito will cower away and force Kakashi into control. These are Obito’s troubles, though—Obito’s, and perhaps Kakashi’s too, but it’s Obito confiding in him right now. “You knew who I was before I knew who you were. You could have said something, but you didn’t. Do you know why that is?”

Tobi furrows his brows. “...Kakashi didn’t want to.”

“Why, though?”

“Because…” There’s a shift then. The boy stands taller, the creases on his brow smooth out, and he meets Sakumo’s eyes. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Sakumo smiles, but it’s weak. “You didn’t,” he says. He holds the boy by the shoulder and brushes Tobi’s hair from his face. “Sage, boy, you didn’t. Nothing you say could ever hurt me.”

Tobi narrows his eyes, flexing his dirt-stained fingertips. “I’m not…”

“Tobi,” he warns, because it’s both of them that he’s addressing. “I would much rather have you as you are than not have you at all.”

Tobi’s shoulders slump. His eyes fall. And honestly, Sakumo isn’t sure which side he’s seeing right now. It doesn’t matter. “I couldn’t say it.”

“And that’s  _ fine _ ,” he says. “You don’t have to. To me or your grandmother or Rin—you don’t have to say anything. That’s  _ your _ choice to make. If you want a fresh start, Tobi, then take one. If you have a name that you want me to call you, give it. And if you want to leave—” He swallows. “If you  _ ever _ want to leave, then just promise me you’ll tell me first.”

Tobi clenches his fists at his sides and licks his lips. “Then, can I ask something of you?”

Here it is. Sakumo isn’t sure he’s ready to hear it. But he nods, smiles and brushes the hair out of Tobi’s eyes.

“Would it be too much trouble,” he starts, his tone shifting, eyes averted,  _ Obito _ . “Er, I mean…”

Sakumo’s patient. He waits as the boy fumbles with words.

“...Can I stay with you?”

Sakumo stares. That’s… that’s it? That’s all it is?

He feels bad for laughing, he really does. But when Tobi gets all huffy and upset and embarrassed over it, he can only laugh harder. It brings him to tears and he fears that if he can’t reign it in, he’s going to suffocate.

There are worse ways to die.

“Sage, Tobi,” he breathes, somehow, through the fit. “Whatever made you think that you couldn’t?”

“Well, ‘cause, y’know…” He gestures at all of him. “I’m not Kakashi. Not… not really. The part of me that is stays quiet a lot. Isn’t it hard?”

Sakumo has to think a moment. “Kakashi and I… we didn’t speak much. It was that way for a long time, Tobi, and I love him. I always will. Looking for him is the only thing that got me through the past few years. But Kakashi isn’t gone. Even when you’re speaking as Obito, I know that he’s here. He’s quiet. He always has been. And that’s okay.”

He’s surprised when there’s a pair of young arms wrapped around his shoulders, but maybe he shouldn’t be.

* * *

Sakumo is preparing dinner in the kitchen, the tap running as he waits for the water to boil. Over the sizzle of the frying fish on the stove and the rhythmic background noise of the tap, he hears a voice from the dining hall. It’s steady and strong, has been ever since he got home, and he smiles.

“—dunno, he’s kinda… Didn’t you always kick his ass when he challenged you?”

“He’ll make a decent sparring partner, if nothing else.”

“What about Rin?” Obito tries. There’s a grin in his voice, and yes, Sakumo thinks there may be a boyhood crush hidden beneath it. “She’s gonna be an awesome kunoichi.”

“Doesn’t she want to specialize in medical ninjutsu?” Kakashi’s sigh is longsuffering. “We need a heavy hitter if we want to properly test our limits.”

“What limits?”

“This body is sure to have some,” Kakashi says. “You make up half of it.”

“Oi!”

Sakumo shakes his head but he’s grinning. It’s the first time he’s ever heard Tobi speak so openly like this, and it’s a little weird. He’s under no illusions about it; he’s heard Tobi speaking to himself before—or more, he’s  _ overheard _ . Eavesdropped. But before today, Tobi’s never had such a casual back-and-forth. To anyone who doesn’t know Tobi, it would be unnerving. But knowing what he does, Sakumo can only feel hopeful. It feels like a change for the better.

“Gai’s prowess lies in taijutsu,” Kakashi continues, as though he never insulted his other half. “Out of everyone in our class, he’s going to be the heavy hitter.”

“The guy can’t even use ninjutsu,” Obito huffs. “Rin can at least do that.”

“She’s average.”

“She’s  _ not _ !” Oh yes, definitely a crush. Sakumo leans back to see Tobi through the doorway in all of his red-faced anger. “Fine, not Rin. What about Asuma? He’s old man Hokage’s son, right?”

There’s a sudden shift, Kakashi glaring dully at the far wall. “You can’t address the Hokage like that. It’s rude. But… no. Asuma’s nothing special.”

“You say that about  _ everyone _ . We can’t all be chunin at six years old, Bakashi.”

“Gai,” he says, arms crossed. “Final offer.”

Obito rolls their eyes. “What about Dad, then? He’s strong, right?”

Tobi sits back-straight and stiff, and then he eyes the doorway. Sakumo’s already gone back to cooking as though nothing ever happened.

They used to spar a lot, he and his son. Kakashi was still learning, a budding young lad with a spark in his eye. He was talented and wanted to learn anything and everything. It was cute. It  _ was _ , until the council took notice. As Kakashi aged, all of his training focused on dummies and targets. It was all Sakumo could do to slow his boy’s progress. He erected those training dummies, painted those targets, and begged the Sage,  _ please don’t make him jōnin. _

“Dad doesn’t…” Kakashi’s voice lowers, barely above a whisper. As though Sakumo won’t hear. “He’s too busy to spar.”

If only that were the case.

Sakumo heads out into the dining hall and sets the places at the table, smiling at Tobi. “What’s this I hear about sparring practice?”

Tobi shrugs. “I want to see what I’m capable of.”

“A lot, I’m sure.” Between Kakashi’s skills and Obito’s sharingan, he has no illusions about what Tobi can do with practice and patience. “I wouldn’t mind.”

Tobi blinks.

“Helping you train,” he offers. He leaves the room again, this time returning with the first dish—the fish, carefully glazed and seasoned in just the way that his wife used to make. They used to cook together before Kakashi was born. Between both of their missions, there were times when they didn’t see one another for days or weeks, but every time they were both home, they cooked. And oh, how that woman loved to cook. Sakumo likes it because she liked it. He likes it in honour of her. “I wouldn’t mind it. Though I  _ do _ think that you should find some sparring partners amongst your class. It’s good to build relationships within your age group.”

Tobi drums his fingers along the table top. "Really?"

"Of course."

"But before…"

Before, Kakashi was being thrust into active duty at six years old. Before, Sakumo feared the worst for his son.

He won't ever say it, but he's glad that Tobi's in the academy. He hopes it will stay that way just one more year.

"I have a big mission coming up," he says. "Let's train when I get back, okay?"

When Tobi nods, eyes alight, he thinks that it's Kakashi that he sees.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! Sorry this chapter is so late in the day, but by the time I was done editing it, AO3 was down for maintenance and I've been out all evening. Still out technically, but I'll post the epilogue either sometime around midnight or sometime tomorrow since I intended to post them together.
> 
> This is the last full length chapter, so enjoy!

Tobi rises from the dead an hour before he has to be at the academy. Kakashi isn’t a morning person while Obito is, so it’s usually Obito (or the half of his memories that  _ think _ he’s Obito) in control during the first morning hours. Kakashi’s thoughts are a fog until he’s at least had breakfast. He hops out of bed with a bounce to his step. Today starts his second week of class.

Today is also his first day with Dad gone. Dad had to leave for his mission before the break of dawn, and that’s okay—it’s  _ really _ okay—because he’ll do just fine on his own.

Tobi washes up in the bathroom, staring at his reflection in the mirror. Some days it’s still jarring. There are times when he wakes up and the person staring back at him is entirely foreign. Then there are days, like today, where he knows who it is staring back. Tobi grins at himself.

_ “Food,” _ Kakashi demands from the muddied mess of his thoughts.  _ “Stop wasting time.” _

“I’m goin’, I’m goin’.”

Tobi climbs down the stairs two at a time and stares at the lidded meal at the table, a note resting on top.

_ Good luck. _

Tobi has plans for today. He’s not sure how well they’ll pan out, but he has plans.

He looks forward to it.

_ “Food.” _

He rolls his eyes dramatically and takes a seat. “You’re so miserable in the morning.”

* * *

Rin makes a habit of staring out the window while waiting for class to begin. She’s not sure when it started or why, but all she ever does lately is stare at the clouds and wait out the hours. Her thoughts are rolling on and on in her head, always jumping around from one subject to the next. The more she thinks, the less she fixates, and she’s come to see that as a very good thing.

She knows that Obito is dead. She doesn’t need a memorial to understand that. It only forces thoughts to the surface that she doesn’t want to entertain.

There’s a clatter at the front of the room followed by whispers. A shadow looms overhead and Rin looks up, blinking clueless eyes at the boy she sees there. A classmate takes purchase on her desk, his legs dangling over the side, leaning back on his palms as he stares at her.

She lifts her head and gives the boy a look-over. She doesn’t recognize him at first. He’s pale with pale hair, dark eyes. It takes a moment for her to draw up a vague, unimportant memory from the week before. “You’re…”

The boy stares down at her with dull eyes, then nods to the left. “The one who sits next to you.”

Oh, right. She forgot.

He narrows his eyes. “You forgot.”

Oh no. He knows.

Rin puts on a smile and leans away.. His legs are dangling right next to her and a part of her wants to kick him off the desk and onto the floor, but their instructor will be here soon and she doesn’t want to blemish her spotless record. “No I didn't,” she lies through her teeth. She hasn’t paid a moment of attention to class in weeks, certainly not to this  _ one kid _ . “You’re that transfer.”

“That transfer,” he scoffs, bitter and insulted. “Tobi.” He taps the desk impatiently. “ _ Tobi. _ We sit next to each other. You could at least introduce yourself.”

“Er…” What’s there to be so annoyed about? “Okay, let’s do that then. I’m—”

“Rin,” he says.

So he already knows. Why make such a fuss, then?

“Okay,  _ Rin _ .” The bottom half of Tobi’s face is covered by a mask, but she can tell by his eyes that he’s grinning beneath it. “You’re going to be my sparring partner.”

“Says who?”

Tobi shrugs again. “I mean, you can refuse,” he says, “but I don’t think you will.”

Tobi slides off the desk and onto his seat and suddenly class is starting. Rin blinks and looks around. People are whispering. No one dares to say anything to Tobi’s face—she doesn’t know why—but she hears them utter his name beneath their breath. Tobi.  _ Tobi Hatake. _

That name brings her back to an altar of flowers and it crushes her heart. Obito isn’t the only one she mourns for. But as far as she knows, Kakashi and the White Fang are the last of their clan.

She looks over to this kid and wonders where he fits in.

He smiles back at her and it sort of makes her want to punch him.

* * *

The bell tolls. While her classmates gather up their things, Rin turns her attention to the new kid. Everything about him has shifted since this morning. His energy is gone and he looks entirely too bored to really be paying the world any mind. She wouldn’t be surprised to find that he didn’t retain a single thing they learned in their lectures today. Just like the rest of the class, he’s packing his books away into a bag and taking his time doing it.

They haven’t said a word to one another since the start of the school day and frankly, she doesn’t know what to make of him. They’ve sat next to each other for a week now and he’s given her as little attention as she’s given him, so why is today any different?

She gets up and leans back against her desk, hands securing the straps of her backpack as she watches him and waits.

“Fallen for me already?” he asks, sounding thoroughly put-out by the thought. His tone is entirely different from how it was before—quiet and rolling like a wave. “That’s no good, Rin. I like playing hard to get.”

Rin rolls her eyes and gives him a look. “You said we’re sparring partners,” she levels. “Let’s go, then.”

Tobi makes a vague noise of amusement as he snaps his bag shut, slings it over his shoulder, and meets her eyes. “You want that?”

“Well if you keep questioning me, I may change my mind.”

“Fair.”

Tobi shoves his hands into his pockets and drags his feet to the row of desks against the classroom’s inner wall. Maito Gai is still seated, halfway through packing up, looking like a defeated man. The three of them are all that remain in the room. Everyone else is filing through the front gate with freedom in their minds.

Tobi kicks the desk. It rattles and the legs scrape along the floor, and Gai looks up.

“You heard the lady. Let’s go.”

Gai is wholly confused, looking between the two. When Tobi leaves the room first, he and Rin share a look.

“Umm…”

Rin waves her arms and heaves a sigh. “I don’t know, either. Did he ask you to spar with him, too?”

“Spar?” Gai follows Tobi out of the room. “No, he never— _ spar _ ?”

Why is it that Gai practically launches himself out of his seat then? Why is it that he runs to catch up to Tobi? Rin’s not sure. She’s the last one left now, though, and takes a cursory glance around the class. He’s right—she won’t refuse. It’s not because she particularly wants a sparring partner or wants to test herself; she hasn’t had feelings like that in a long, long time.

Rin doesn’t like going home. She doesn’t like walking down the path that they used to take together and she doesn’t like unlocking the door to an empty, dark little flat. She doesn’t like sitting there, stewing in her memories, and she hates thinking of all of the ways that she failed  _ him. _

Rin isn’t sure about Tobi, but he’s giving her an excuse. She would be stupid not to take it.

* * *

The training grounds are empty at this time of day. Rin looks around. Training Ground 13 is one that’s used for genin training. With the way things are going now, they may be standing here with a jōnin instructor next year. She may be the medic of a budding new team being sent on their very first missions.

Obito wanted that more than her. She feels guilty making it to that point without him.

Rin slides her backpack off and looks around. Maito Gai has perked up some and is now stretching, his feet planted shoulder-length apart. There were times years ago that Rin remembered seeing him with Kakashi Hatake. He’d follow the village’s youngest chunin around like a puppy and demand challenges, and now he’s lost that. He’s lost something just like Rin has. He lost a friend.

Rin sighs. She better get warmed up, too, then. She does stretches of her own, glancing now and then at Tobi. Tobi isn’t getting ready at all. He yawns, looks to one of the trees in the training ground, and something tells her that he’s thinking of taking a nap.

He doesn’t think they’ll be a challenge. It irks her. It pulls her from her melancholy long enough to decide that she’s going to use his corpse to wipe up the blood when she’s done with him.

Tobi notices her glare and smiles behind his mask. Oh yes, she’s going to beat him into the ground.

“Alright,” she says, her body feeling loose enough now to pull out a win. “I’m ready. Who’s first?”

Tobi arches a brow. “Hm?”

“Me or Gai? Who should kick your ass first?”

Tobi looks between the two of them, his eyes slowly panning from one to the other. He laughs.

It sounds so completely different to the dull tone he took moments before.

Tobi faces them then, hands still in his pockets. He pulls one out and tosses a pouch to Rin—a kunai pouch. “I’ll take you both on to start.”

Rin blinks. “You can’t be serious.” She shares a look with Gai, who looks just about as insulted as she feels. Gai’s never worn a face like that, not that she knows. When she opens the bag, she finds professional-grade kunai. They’re nothing like the dull-edged training equipment back at the academy. Does this kid want to get hurt? Rin is agile and has strength. What she lacks in raw talent, she makes up for in tactical skill. And Gai—well sure, he can’t use ninjutsu to save his life, but lately Gai’s taijutsu skills have shown him to be so much more than he used to be. In a taijutsu battle with anyone in class, Gai will come out on top with a smile on his face.

“Maa, I’m sure you’ll do fine. I believe in you.”

She doesn’t care if it’s unfair. She wants to hit him. And she wants it to  _ hurt. _

Rin straps the pouch to her leg and readies her stance. He wants to use real kunai? He wants to play?  _ Fine. _ They’ll play. She stomps over to Gai, wrapping an arm around his neck and pulling him in. He yelps, blinking at her, and she grins.

“Alright, Gai. Let’s knock him down a peg,” she says.

Gai makes a face. “That’s not very good sportsmanship.”

“Yeah, well—he started it.” Her defence is weak but she doesn’t care. “Tobi’s new, so I don’t think he knows anything about our fighting styles. That’s where we’ll get him.”

Gai spends a moment thinking about it before smiling. “We’ll work together then, my friend?”

“Of course.” Tobi brought it upon himself. “I’ll keep him busy. Up close you should be fast enough to break his hand signs if he tries any ninjutsu, but I’ll counter if any get through. We don’t know his fighting style, either, so it’s better to be cautious. Sound good?”

“You almost done conspiring over there?” Tobi yawns. “I’m falling asleep.”

Rin releases her partner from her grasp and spins around to face their opponent with a tight-lipped smile. “Ready when you are!”

Tobi narrows his eyes. “I don’t like that look you’re giving me. But whatever.” He nods at them. “Alright. Let’s go.”

Both students vanish on the trailing edge of his voice. Tobi looks around, scratches his head, and sighs.

Rin watches from the brush. The training ground is divided up into a flat plains section and a small wood, the perfect cover for any shinobi worth their weight. If she’s learned anything from class, it’s not to be hasty. Now, she doesn’t know Gai very well, but he doesn’t  _ seem _ the type to lie in wait. She can’t stay here long because of that and even if she does, nothing will change. Tobi isn’t moving. What started out as a spar has quickly turned into a mock battle to which she holds the trigger.

Tobi yawns again. The moment his eyes shut, Rin’s out of the bushes and gliding through the air with three kunai splayed between her fingers. They shoot down at her target and they  _ hit _ . The body vanishes in a puff of smoke. In its wake, a log clatters against the dirt. She never took her eyes off of him; when did he have time to set up a substitution?

She moves to duck into another tree and there he is, perched upon the branch she was going to land on. Her hands flash through a succession of signs. Water pulled from the air gathers before her in droplets and she takes aim as she falls.

Tobi makes a noise of amusement. “Water style. Is that your affinity?”

They shoot at him like bullets and he’s gone, nothing more than a dispelled clone. Rin expects that. She swivels around, another kunai in hand, and reels back her arm—

He’s there on the ground.

She throws the kunai and follows it down. Tobi catches it just as she lands but that’s her last one. She won’t let it go. With one fluid motion, she kicks at his arm, knocking it out of his hand, and snatches it out of the air.

Then Tobi’s behind her. When did he—?

There’s a kunai to her throat. She can feel the cool steel pressing into her skin and her hands are empty. She  _ knows _ that she grabbed it. She knows that, she does, but—

Where is Gai?

“Maa, you’re not much of a fighter.”

Rin twitches. She swallows against the blade to her neck.

“Well, as a medic-nin—”

She’s not sure how she manages to punch him in the face—how he’s distracted enough for her to do so or how the blow actually lands—but seeing him drop to the ground is impossibly satisfying.

Rin blinks. She looks around. She’s not where she was standing just a moment ago. In fact, she’s exactly where she was at the start of the match, as though she hasn’t moved at all. “Huh?”

Tobi’s on the ground, rubbing his cheek, and beside her Gai is lying face-first in the dirt, looking like a defeated man.

“What?” She looks around again. Nothing changes. Feeling the pouch tied around her leg, all of the kunai are there. “Huh?”

Tobi groans his pain, but then he’s laughing. “You have such a  _ nasty _ right hook,” he teases. “Why bother with ninjutsu when you can brute force your way to victory?”

Rin is red-faced and confused. She doesn’t much appreciate the teasing.

Tobi looks up at her and his eyes are red—really  _ truly _ red. A pattern weaves through them as he stares back at her. His eyes are spinning. His eyes are spinning and that’s the sharingan, that’s the sign of an Uchiha— _ Obito _ —

Rin covers her mouth. She feels like she’s going to be sick.

The red recedes and Tobi’s smile is gone. He hops back up and nudges Gai with his foot. “Get up. How long are you going to sulk?”

Gai pries his face out of the dirt to stare teary-eyed at his opponent. “R-rival…”

Tobi cocks his head to the side, considering Gai for a moment. Poor Gai looks like he got into a physical fight with Tobi, meaning that Tobi only kept  _ Rin _ occupied with that, er—with  _ whatever _ that was.

Tobi offers a hand and pulls Gai up. Gai’s shielding his eyes with his arm, muffling his sobs with his sleeves, and Tobi looks incredibly put-upon.

“What are you crying for?”

“Y-you fight just like…”

Tobi heaves a sigh and pats Gai’s back. “There, there. Stop blubbering.”

That only makes Gai cry harder. Tobi is a lot of things. He’s shown so many faces in this one short day that Rin can’t even describe his personality. But one thing she  _ can _ say is that he doesn’t know how to comfort people. He looks completely lost.

“Hey,” Rin calls, stepping forward with her hands on her hips. “What about the match?”

Tobi arches a brow. “I won, obviously. You got trapped in my genjutsu.”

“I knocked you down,” she counters. “ _ And _ I got out of it, all on my own. And—and why do  _ you  _ have the sharingan?”

Tobi shrugs. “It’s a mystery.”

“Don’t ‘it’s a mystery’ me! That’s an Uchiha bloodline trait. The only way you could get that is—is—”

Tobi waits. She falters. What is she accusing him of, exactly?

Tobi shoves his hands back into his pockets when there are no more words to be said. The moment he starts away, Gai recovers. It’s like magic, really, how he does that.

“Let’s have a rematch!” Gai demands, chasing after him.

“Maa, I’m tired.” Tobi yawns again. This is, what, the fourth time? Fifth? “I just wanted to test the limits of my genjutsu.”

“Then tomorrow—”

“I’ll be tired tomorrow, too.”

“But Tobi—” Gai lights up. “Then, I’ll challenge you—”

“And the next day. And forever.”

“But—But—” There’s despair in Gai’s voice. It’s tragic, really. “Where’s your spirit, Tobi? This is the springtime of our youth! Why waste it away sleeping?”

“Sleep is nice. Don’t try to convince me otherwise.”

“But…”

They’re leaving her behind. Rin isn’t sure what happened while she was in Tobi’s genjutsu, but she hasn’t seen Gai like this in—well, in—

He hasn’t been like this since Kakashi was alive.

The setting sun gives a haunting glow to the world around them. Night’s coming and she hates it. She doesn’t go home late anymore. She doesn’t go outside at night. When the sun sets, all she can think of is that last time. It’s a memory unmarred by time, clear as the day it happened, Obito’s grin as he left her at her door. She looked down at him from the top of the stairs and yelled, she told him—”Don’t be late!” He rolled his eyes and grinned at her, waving back at her with both arms.

She went inside and regretted that decision every night since.

Tobi drags his steps and looks back at her. “We’ll leave you behind,” he cautions. “Hurry up an’ I’ll walk you home.”

Tobi is annoying and cocky and a bit of a show-off. He’s lazy and quiet and loud all at once. Everything about him seems to only last a few spare seconds.

Rin wants to hate him but it’s so very, very hard.

* * *

Class starts the next morning with an empty desk. Rin is drawn to it despite herself. She wonders if Tobi is sick or if he just can't be bothered to show up. During roll call, the instructor asks around about him. No one has seen him—no one knows him that well to begin with. Yesterday aside, he's spent his early days at the academy in relative solitude.

Rin isn't disappointed. She's just… curious.

When Tobi wanders in an hour into class, he looks like he just fell out of bed. Or got into a fight. The visible skin on his arms is discoloured and tender, soon to bruise.

"Tobi," the instructor greets. He is  _ not _ impressed. "So nice of you to join us."

Tobi shoves his hands into his pockets and yawns. "Nice to see you, too."

The instructor taps his desk impatiently. "Care to explain where you were this morning?"

"Not particularly."

Rin wonders how long this kid can hold onto the instructor's good graces.

"Take a seat, Tobi."

Tobi drags himself into the room and drops down next to her. He’s uncaring of the eyes on him and the attention that he’s brought himself. And it’s like magic, the way that he starts falling asleep the moment the lesson resumes. Rin rolls her eyes and tries to focus on the front of the class, but her eyes slide back. There’s bruising on Tobi’s arms and it’s strange, seeing that. It’s strange seeing him hurt when he so easily disposed of Rin and Gai just yesterday.

She looks at him and she does everything she can to push back the thoughts of who he reminds her of.

* * *

“I fell,” he says.

Rin looks up from the healing glow of her hand to settle him under a dull glare. She never asked. She didn’t and yet he’s giving her excuses, averting his eyes and rubbing the back of his neck, looking like an entirely different person. Where has the confidence of yesterday gone? But she won’t prod. It’s none of her business.

It’s none of her business and yet she’ll spend their lunch break healing his bruises.

“Really,” he insists. “You don’t need to be upset.”

The glow of her hand wavers and she bites her lip. “I’m not.”

Tobi lets out a small snort, crossing his legs beneath him and hunching his back. They’ve migrated to the roof for privacy—the classroom is crowded and there’s too much going on in the yard. Rin is in the early stages of learning medical ninjutsu. She’s not very good yet. Even the smallest bit of healing takes a tremendous effort and she needs focus. Classmates chatting to one another doesn’t allow that. Kids playing ninja tag are distractions that she just can’t deal with at this point in her studies. So, they’ve come here.

They asked Gai to join them, but he’s set a personal challenge for himself. She can just imagine him doing something stupid, like walking around the perimeter of the school on his hands for the full hour.

Tobi is grinning at her. His eyes are on her and he’s watching. She tries to ignore it, but it’s hard.

“I mean it,” he says. “I’m okay. I got—” He thinks. Frowns. Shakes his head.

He’s such a strange creature.

“Have you ever fought with yourself?”

Rin gives him a look.

He laughs. “Stupid question, huh?”

“What kind of fight?”

“Huh?”

Rin’s hand falls away from the mostly-healed bruise and she gestures for his other arm. She takes it in hers, running her thumb over the damaged skin on his forearm. If he’s telling the truth, he probably used his arms to break his fall. That’s how the damage appears to her untrained eyes. “It depends on what kind of fight you mean,” she says absently. The healing glow of her hand returns. She can feel a gentle heat radiating from her palm. “I’ve been angry with myself before. And frustrated. Sometimes I just want to scream at myself. ‘Why did you do that? Why are you like this?’ That sort of thing.”

Tobi’s grin is gone. He’s sitting back-hunched, his free hand on his ankle, sitting like Obito used to sit, and it’s hard for her. It’s been hard ever since yesterday, ever since she saw those sharingan eyes. But Obito never awakened his. She reminds herself of that whenever the resemblance gets to be a bit too much. “And what,” he starts, hesitates, “what do you do then?”

Rin has the wrong idea about this kid. She knows that now. She sees it in his pleading eyes and cautious words. He’s not the self-assured genius he played the part of yesterday. She smiles at him. “I’m still trying to figure that part out,” she says. “So you got—mad at yourself? And you fell?”

Tobi pouts and averts his eyes. “Something like that. I got… frustrated. Then it was like both sides of me wanted to do something completely different and I just—I dunno. Lost control for a moment. Fell down the stairs. It’s super embarrassing.”

“Sounds like it.”

Rin can’t see behind the mask, but she  _ can _ see Tobi’s pale ears flush with colour. She wants to call it cute but doesn’t dare. How can he be cute when she doesn’t know what side of Tobi she’ll see next? It’s scary, in a way, how unpredictable he can be.

“Then how do you think I feel?” she asks. “I lost to your genjutsu yesterday, only managed  _ one punch. _ It didn’t even bruise. Then you show up the next day beaten up by the floor.”

“Shut up,” he mutters.

“Be more careful. I need to save face.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

The bruise is all but gone. Rin checks him over for anymore injuries before finally ridding her hands of the ordeal. She grabs her lunch—a paper bag that’s been sitting untouched since they first got here twenty minutes ago—and takes a seat next to Tobi to eat. She’s exhausted. It takes a lot of fine control to heal and she’s not used to the mental strain.

He’s easier to talk to today. He’s familiar. It scares her. She doesn’t know why, but it scares her.

Rin jumps when she feels him leaning against her shoulder. She’s ready to shove him off when she stops, barely hearing his shallow breaths.

“I’ve missed you,” he says.

It breaks her heart.

* * *

When Tobi doesn’t show up at school a week later, she assumes he’s going to be late again. An hour passes, then two, and Tobi is still nowhere to be seen. It nags at her. A ball forms in the pit of her stomach. It’s too similar, too familiar. She  _ hates this. _

Class ends and she mechanically approaches the teacher’s desk. He’s sitting there, scrawling out corrections on homework that’s been submitted as the rest of his students file out of class for the day. He doesn’t notice her and she waits. Finally, he looks up and smiles.

“Is there something I can do for you, Rin?”

“Tobi—” She starts and reconsiders. “I was wondering if you knew Tobi’s address. I can bring him the work from today.”

“It’s a bit out of the way. Are you sure?”

“I don’t mind,” she insists and it comes off a bit desperate. She can’t help it. This is too familiar, too much of an echo of her memories, and she needs it to  _ stop. _ Tobi is okay. Tobi is someone that she’s known for a week—except that he’s not, but he has to be, he can’t—

A paper is held out to her and she takes it with a low bow. She’s out the door before the teacher can even give her the work.

As she runs down the hall, she’s brought to a pause. Gai is there waiting for her.

“Rin,” he calls, pushing off the wall. “Are you going to see Tobi?”

She nods. She’s trying not to cry because she’s just turned eleven, damn it, she’s eleven and she’s better than this. But Tobi’s going through her head now just as he has been all week. It’s been normal between them—some semblance of normal that it really shouldn’t be. They’ve only met recently. But every day with him is a callback to her days with Obito. Every time he looks at her, she’s seeing someone else.

She knows that it’s not okay. Obito is dead. They found him with the other children, and they weren’t told anything about who was behind it all but she knows a little—that the ones responsible were testing a forbidden jutsu, that the children were test subjects. Obito, Kakashi—they were among the casualties. She knows that. She knows that and yet Tobi’s been coming to her every day with a stupid grin behind his mask. He leans on her desk and teases her. He gets flustered easily and isn’t so hard to tease back. And he said, he told her—

_ “I’ve missed you.” _

“Rin?” Gai’s watching her, concerned. “Are you okay?”

Rin chokes out a sob and crumples the address in her hand as she tries to force it all back. She can’t. Gai squeezes her shoulder and stares at the paper in her hands as they come up to wipe away her tears.

Gai smiles at her. “I’ll go with you,” he says. “It’s alright.”

Rin nods, jerky in her movements. Her hands are shaking. She’s no good like this. She takes a deep breath and calms herself, she needs to. She’s no good to anyone like this. If something happened, if Tobi was taken like—

“He’ll be okay.”

She looks up from her furiously scrubbing hands and bloodshot eyes find Gai’s face. He’s so calm, so sure of himself, that she can’t ever doubt him.

“Right,” she rasps out. The tears stop. Her head aches and pounds and demands she close her eyes, but the crying is over. “Yeah. Okay.”

Gai unfolds the paper and reads it over. He takes her hand in his and they’re down the hall, out of the building and down the street. They aren’t running. They don’t need to. Gai’s calming presence assures her of that.

“Sorry,” she manages to murmur, wiping the last tears from her eyes. “Thank you.”

Gai grins, wide and warm and everything that she needs in that moment. She hasn’t had this in a long, long time.

“Anything for a friend.”

* * *

The Hatake estate is as empty as it is large. They knock twice on the front entrance to be met with nothing but silence and that only stirs up Rin's fears once more. This isn't right. If he's sick, why would he have possibly left home? Something has to have happened. This is  _ wrong _ —

She lifts her head to meet Gai. His hand is on her shoulder, grounding her, and he looks just as calm as he always has.

"His name wasn't called," Gai remarks.

Rin blinks at him.

"During roll call. His name wasn't called. That means the school was notified of his absence."

Gai is right. She's so blinded by her fear that she fails to see the truth hidden in plain sight. Someone must have contacted the school. Where do they go from here, then? How can they be sure that he's okay?

They'll wait. He has to return sometime, she knows, and so they'll wait. She camps out at the front door with her back to the wall and grabs a book out of her bag. On the path further out from the building, Gai trains the same way that he always does. This time he's focusing on balance, trying to keep his body level and upright with all of his weight on his thumbs. It's a sight to behold and more of a distraction than Rin's book; she finds herself watching him more often than reading.

It's forty minutes later that a stranger arrives at the door. Gai hops to his feet and Rin follows the man down the pathway. He's tall, blond, wearing a jōnin uniform. His eyes are blue and soft as he looks at them.

"Friends of Tobi, I'll assume." The man fishes a key from his pocket and strides on up to the door to unlock it. It slides open and he steps right on in as though he owns the place. He's only there for four, maybe five minutes before he's locking back up. But he doesn't just leave. He looks between them and smiles. "Do you have something for him? I can bring it to him, if you'd like."

Rin's empty-handed. She doesn't have the work that she said she would bring to him, but she does have her own notes. With careful debate, she opens up her bag and draws them out. The man accepts her notes with a smile on his face.

"Thank you," he says. "I'm sure that Tobi will be grateful."

"Um—"

"How do you know Tobi, Mister?" It's Gai who asks, vaulting into the air and landing on his feet in the dirt.

"I'm a friend," the man answers vaguely, looking between them. They're unsatisfied and he knows it; he rubs the back of his neck and laughs. "A friend of his father's, I suppose you could say. It so happens that I'm on my way to see him."

"His father?" Gai blinks, making his approach with his hands on his hips. "Do you mean the White Fang?"

That can't be right; it's true that Tobi belongs to the Hatake clan, but Kakashi is an only child. The White Fang has no surviving sons… unless he adopted Tobi, of course. Then things start to make sense. Tobi is a Hatake with the sharingan. He's the heir to a dying clan who carries Uchiha blood. Why does Gai know that, though? Why Gai and not her? Did Tobi tell him?

The man doesn't answer, not at first. His eyes linger on Rin, carefully assessing her, and he tucks the notes into the bag at his side. “You can come, if you’d like,” he says. “I’m sure Tobi could use the company.”

Rin and Gai look between one another. It isn’t a question, really. It’s only a formality.

* * *

Rin stands in the doorway to a private room on the hospital’s second floor. She clings to the doorframe as the others pass her into the room. Gai makes his presence known first, a loud exclaim of Tobi’s name that dies in his throat when Tobi turns to glare at him.

Tobi presses his finger to his lips.

“Shhh.”

Gai slaps a hand over his mouth and nods.

On the bed lies a man of stark familiarity. The White Fang is asleep. He looks now just as he did two, almost three years ago. His name is Sakumo. He’s Kakashi’s father. He’s also Tobi’s guardian, it seems, and he’s been injured on a mission. Minato, the man who led them here, has taken over that mission in Sakumo’s stead. He’ll be setting out tonight to move under the veil of moonfall.

Minato places a hand on Tobi’s head and Tobi ducks beneath it. His shoulders are sloped and he looks defeated in a totally broken way. Tobi is silent. Gai stage-whispers to him questions—questions that Rin shares—but they fall on deaf ears because all Tobi is seeing right now is his father.

Minato has brought food. When Tobi refuses to eat, he places it on the bedside table and takes his leave. Gai stays for longer. He’s filling the silence until sunset when he, too, has to make his exit.

Now it’s just Rin. Rin and Tobi.

Rin crosses the room quietly and takes the seat where Gai once sat, right next to Tobi’s. Tobi hasn’t looked at her. She suspects that he won’t. There’s something so different about him now, so foreign and cold, quiet and bitter. He’s not the Tobi that he’s been over the past week. This is a whole other person entirely, she’s sure of it. He has to be. He hasn’t smiled at her, hasn’t met her eyes. He hasn’t said a word.

Tobi is fisting the fabric of his pants. He’s angry. He’s frustrated. But he isn’t wearing those emotions on his face, no, he’s just—

Empty.

It’s hard to watch.

“He’ll be okay,” she says. Tobi looks like he needs words like those. “He just needs rest. So don’t worry too much, you know? Things will be—”

He’s looking at her now. She shrinks beneath the intensity of his charcoal eyes.

“Sorry,” she says, and she doesn’t know what she’s apologising for.

Tobi faces forward again. He scrubs a hand over his face, heaves a sigh, and some of the edge leaves his face. The hard lines once creasing his brow smooth out. “I’m fine,” he says. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I’m not—”

“I’m angry,” Tobi says. “I could have taken that mission. He didn’t need to.”

Rin frowns. “Tobi—”

“I’m stuck in the academy while my father is out fighting a war. It’s not right.”

“You’re just a kid—”

“I’ve fought before,” he says. His voice is low and dark like the calm of a storm, holding back a finely-tuned rage. He doesn’t yell like he does when he’s excited or annoyed. This voice is flat and wrong. It’s a side of Tobi that Rin hasn’t seen since their spar, a side that rarely comes out around her. “I have the sharingan now. There is no reason for me to waste time inside the village. The enemy will just keep moving and Konoha needs every able body it can get.”

“Your logic is stupid.” She hangs her head, staring into her lap. She doesn’t want to look at him, so she won’t. If she does, it may be her that he’s glaring at next. “Stop blaming yourself. What good will it do you?”

“I keep,” he starts, swallows. His eyes are only on his father. The rest of the world may as well be nothing but an illusion. “I keep wondering if this is how he felt when he found me. Or if this is what it was like when he lost Kakashi. But that’s stupid, isn’t it? It must have been… so much worse than this. And then I get angry at myself and how useless I am. I want to  _ do something. _ ”

Rin nods, pulling her bag onto her lap.

“I want to help him, but I can’t. I want to tell  _ you _ , but I  _ can’t _ .”

“Tell me what?”

Tobi laughs. It’s a sad, bitter thing, and it sounds almost familiar. “Please don’t ask.”

“Okay.” Rin presses her lips together. There’s food on the bedside table, untouched and unwanted, and it worries her. Minato brought that for him but he hasn’t touched it. “I won’t ask, but I need you to eat. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Tobi reaches for the paper bag automatically, pulling fruit out first. His mask goes down—she can see the pale of his skin in her periphery, and he takes one bite, then another. It’s slow and hesitant, but he’s eating. He’s listening. How he is now, she never thought that he would.

She gets up the courage to look at him then. She sees the pale outline of his face for the first time and she sees someone that she shouldn’t. She sees eyes that she shouldn’t, a mouth that she shouldn’t. His face is a perfect, crushing reminder of something that has nothing to do with him. She looks away—scrubs at her eyes. He doesn’t notice.

She won’t ask. She said that she won’t. She  _ promised. _

Rin squeezes her eyes shut and bites her lip. This whole thing is stupid and Tobi is a walking contradiction and none of this is okay. But then she feels a hand on hers, warm to the touch, pale fingers curling into her palm, and it’s enough to drive those thoughts away.

These are Obito’s hands.

This is Obito’s smile.

“Thanks,” he says. “Sorry for worryin’ you.”

Obito’s eyes on Tobi’s face.

“Ya don’t need to cry, jeez…”

“Shut up. I’m not.”

“Liar.”

It’s Obito’s hand she’s squeezing and Kakashi’s father they’re here for. None of this makes sense and she hates herself for thinking this way, but all she can do is keep these thoughts to herself. She can’t stop thinking them. They won’t go away.

Something about it feels so  _ right. _

* * *

Sakumo wakes to every pain in his body saying a friendly ‘hello’. He’s silent against the aches and the pulling as he shifts on the stiff hospital mattress. He’s been through worse. There are bandages secured around his middle and shoulder, burn marks on his forearms, but it’ll take more than that to bring down Konoha’s White Fang.

When he opens his eyes, Tobi is there. He expects as much. He smiles at his boy. Small fingers curl around his hand, holding it like something precious, and it’s sweet. He isn’t sure he expects this of Kakashi. Not outwardly, not so open. Obito’s a good influence.

Leaning against Tobi’s side is Rin, eyes closed, half crumpled in her chair as she sleeps. Sakumo is thankful to see her. He’s been so worried for so long about Tobi starting at the academy—that he won’t reach out to his classmates, that he’ll push everyone away just as he tried to do with Sakumo. Tobi needs people. He needs people like Rin, people who will take him as he is, who knew him before and won’t hesitate to see him for what he is. Sakumo doesn’t know Rin well, but he met her once. He saw her love for Obito in the urgency of her voice and the pleading of her eyes. Obito means to her what she means to him. And here she is, lying at that boy’s side, completely content.

Sakumo is so pleased that he’s ready to go back to sleep.

“Not even a ‘good morning’, Dad?”

Sakumo arches a brow. Tobi looks tired. He’s been up all night, no doubt, but a look at the window shows that it’s still dark. “Well,” he starts, his voice hoarse and throat dry, “it’s not morning yet. Give this old man some time.”

“How do you feel?”

“Terrible,” he admits, smiling. The hands around his tighten their grip. “Better, after seeing you.”

“Stupid old man.”

He laughs. Pain shoots through his chest but it doesn’t stop him. Kakashi wouldn’t have spoken to him like that. It doesn’t sound quite like Obito, either. It’s too quiet. His boys are changing, one step at a time, and he can’t wait to see what they’ll become.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Tobi frowns. His mask is bunched around his neck in a rare display of vulnerability, one that Kakashi never would have allowed before. Not with Rin here. Not here, in a public space where anyone could walk in at any time.

Tobi is changing. It’s a beautiful thing.

“Nothing to worry about,” he assures. His eyes fall to the sleeping girl and he knows that he’s smiling but he can’t help it. Her presence here means something, even if Rin, herself, knows nothing about it. “I see you’ve made a friend.”

“Oh, um… yeah.” Tobi glances at the girl. He releases Sakumo’s hand to instead fiddle with the fabric of his sleeve. “It’s complicated. I think.”

Sakumo arches a brow.

“Most of the time, she just wants to hit me,” he sighs. “But Obito thinks it’s fine, so…”

“Does she know?”

Tobi ducks his head, stealing a glance at her. “I didn’t tell her,” he says. “But I think she figured it out.”

Sakumo nods. She figured it out all on her own, just as he did. She knows and she’s still here. Tobi won’t talk about it. It’s not in his nature. That’s fine, though. One day, Rin will have the courage to say something. Until then, she’ll stay by his side, just as Sakumo has done before her. Just as others will do after her.

“Oh.” Tobi lifts his head, a smile stretching across his face. “I fell.”

Sakumo blinks. Tobi looks so happy—so eager and excited to share this information—and Sakumo doesn’t understand. He tries to, though. He really does. “You fell?”

Tobi nods. “I—we fought. Kakashi and Obito. We  _ fought. _ ”

He’s sure that they fight all the time. What makes this fight something to go bragging about? To his confusion, the boy pouts.

“I—Obito couldn’t sleep. We spent the day with Rin, and—and it was _great_. I was so excited but then we saw her home. And then she was gone. And I wanted to go see her again ‘cause I know she gets lonely at home ‘cause of her mom and dad, you know? But Kakashi, he—we needed sleep ‘cause of school an’ stuff. But like, we wouldn’t have been able to get to sleep anyway, so what did it matter? And he told me—we’re not close, what does it matter? We’ll just—scare her away, or something, right? If we push her? She doesn’t know us. But I _do._ _I_ know her. So I—Obito—wanted to leave, Kakashi wanted to stay, and we—we fell. We fell down the stairs. It _hurt._”

Sakumo is nodding along but he isn’t sure why. This sounds like an argument they’d have. Those same insecurities of Kakashi’s have reared their head many times before, but—but why, then, is Tobi so elated by it? The longer that Sakumo stares blank-faced, the more Tobi’s smile falls. He feels bad. He wants to know what the boy is getting at, he really does, but—

“We both tried to take control,” Tobi urges, pleading. “We’re both  _ here _ .”

And now it’s making sense.

Tobi gestures to himself, hitting against his chest almost desperately. “I thought they were just—voices. I thought they were from—from our memories. But they’re  _ here. _ We’re not—we’re still  _ us, _ Dad. We’re here.”

Sakumo tries not to laugh. He does, he really does, because this is important to Tobi. And he hates it, the way Tobi’s revelation shatters beneath his laughter, but it still comes. He doesn’t want to, but—

It’s something that Sakumo has always known. It’s something that he’s told Tobi times before that never seemed to stick.

“Dad,” he urges, his voice cracking in the middle, “I mean it—”

The boy lets out a sudden noise as he’s pulled into Sakumo’s tired embrace. Sakumo holds Tobi close, waits for those small arms to find his back, and they do.

“I know,” he says. “Sage, boy, I’ve always known.”

Tobi is shaking. Neither of them say anything.

It seems silly. This is the boy to whom everything is happening twice. This is a child who can write different words simultaneously with both hands. This is the boy who sees everything from two points of view, memories tinted by two separate consciousnesses. But for all that Sakumo could see it, for all that Inoki sorted it out, Tobi, himself, could not. He convinced himself that he was a product of two halves and that was that. He doesn’t belong anywhere. He’s not Kakashi; he doesn’t have a place in the Hatake estate. He’s not Obito; he can’t pick up where that side of him left off. But that’s wrong.

Tobi’s face is buried against his chest. Sakumo loosens up a little, gives the boy some breathing room, but Tobi stays there against him. Tobi’s arms are weak. His face is hidden. He won’t move.

“...You knew?”

Sakumo snorts. “There would be a problem if I didn’t. You’re my son.”

Tobi still doesn’t move. Sakumo can see the whites of his ears warm with colour, though, even if his face is hidden away. “I feel embarrassed and I don’t like it.”

He laughs. It’s hard not to.

“Dad,” Tobi warns.

Sakumo just gives him another squeeze. Tobi grumbles, settling against him. Sakumo is tired but he could never sleep. He’s sore and exhaustion and his arms feel like lead but he won’t lay back down, won’t leave his boy for a little rest.

Tobi is a child with a lot of insecurities. He fixates. He’s the type to walk alone whenever he can help it, to move along through the dark of the world and say that it’s okay, that it’s better to be alone than to burden someone else, that he doesn’t belong with anyone else. But even if he burns all of his bridges, if he pushes everyone away and takes a path apart from everyone else, Tobi will never be alone. There will always be someone walking through the dark with him, even if he can’t see. And Sakumo knows that Tobi will grow past these feelings. One day, Tobi will stand tall and say, ‘I’m me, and that’s okay. I’m not a burden. I’m happy.’

‘I’m here and I’m not alone.’

When that day comes, Sakumo will be there to see it happen.


	5. Epilogue

The water boils over and Sakumo curses. He hurries over to the stove to lower the heat, and fumbles with the vegetables on the cutting board as he watches the pot settle into a slow, rolling boil. The rice finishes first. The side dishes are still on their way, and it’s a lot. Sakumo has a tendency to overdo his meals when left to his own devices. It’s a problem, really, one that Tobi has lectured him for, time and time again.

The front door is thrown open with a  _ snap. _ He winces, ducking out of the kitchen to assess the damage. He hopes there’s no splintered wood. Not again.

“Rival!” bellows a loud, boisterous voice. Gai stands tall in the entryway, one hand on his hip, a grin on his face. He’s looking to the stairs of the second floor with a clear-cut route of action, but then his eyes catch on Sakumo’s confusion and he smiles, dipping into a low, honoured bow. “Good morning, Master. I hope this wonderful morning is treating you with all the joys of spring.”

Sakumo laughs. Master, again—and he’s only offered to help the boy with his training on one occasion. Gai’s a good kid, even if he soaks up all of the energy in the room. “And a good morning to you.”

“Is Tobi up?” Gai pulls off his shoes and places them neatly against the wall, next to Tobi’s pair.

“Not quite.”

Gai looks up, brows raised. “No? But today is—”

Behind him, Rin lets out a loud, exasperated noise. “ _ Again _ ?” She rolls her eyes, but the moment they meet Sakumo’s, she reddens. “Sorry for intruding, Mr. Hatake.”

“No trouble at all.”

She bows her head, the gesture far less grand from her, then kicks off her shoes and marches up the stairs. “Tobi!” she shouts. “You better not still be sleeping!”

Gai’s holding back. He stays there, tapping his foot impatiently as he waits for the others down at the bottom of the stairs.

Sakumo looks at the dining table, four places set. He’s already prepared for this inevitability. He nods towards it. “Take a seat,” he insists. “Breakfast will be ready soon.”

Gai’s eyes light up and he grins, running to the table. He stops halfway, turning to the family altar, and pays his respects with a bow.

Yes, Gai’s a good kid. One of the best.

Sakumo returns to the kitchen and starts setting out the rice. The side dishes come next. With every passing minute, the echoing noise from the second floor gets louder, more aggressive. He’s unsurprised when Rin comes down the stairs, dragging a barely-coherent Tobi down the steps two at a time.

“—day it is?”

“I know, I know,” he hisses, swatting at her hand. He misses a step and it’s his quick reflexes that keep him on his feet. Then his eyes find the clock. “It’s—it’s not even  _ eight _ ,” he moans. “We have over an _ hour. _ ”

“With you, that may not even be enough.”

Tobi covers his face with his hands and groans. “I hate you. I really, truly do.”

Rin doesn’t care. With her hands on his shoulder blades, she pushes him into the dining hall. He stumbles as he goes forward, still groaning. His sleeve hits one of the pictures on the altar and it clatters to the ground. Tobi doesn’t even seem to register it. Rin does, though. She stops pushing Tobi to crouch down and pick it up, brushing off the dust that’s accumulated over the past few days.

Rin frowns. “Be more careful,” she cautions, shoving the photo in his face. “Look at poor Obito. He could’ve gotten damaged.”

Tobi leans back, Obito’s grinning face held uncomfortably close to his own, and grimaces. “We can get a new frame—it’s no big deal.”

“That’s not the  _ point _ .”

“Whatever.”

As Tobi finds a seat, Rin places the picture alongside the others. She’s careful to line them up neatly and smiles at them, her eyes following the line of faces fondly.

The kids are seated and Sakumo’s soon to join—there’s tea to be made, a nice herbal blend that Kakashi and Rin have been favouring, even when Obito’s been very vocal about how bland it is. They pick up their chopsticks and serve themselves while he waits for the kettle, leaning in the doorway.

When Tobi sits down, Kakashi’s there. He’s quiet as Gai starts to ramble, and as Rin starts to speculate. They’ll be getting their team assignments today. Those two are eager and nervous and so many other things. They’ve made it, they’re here. They’re taking their first steps.

Growing up so fast.

“I wish Lady Tsunade was an instructor,” Rin sighs. “It’d be amazing to learn from her.”

“I’m sure your instructor  _ will _ be amazing, Rin!”

“I hope,” she sighs between bites. Her eyes find Tobi and she pouts. “Must be nice, going back to chunin. You don’t have to flail with the rest of us.”

Tobi shrugs. “There’s nothing wrong with being on a genin team.”

“This from Tobi ‘why haven’t I made jōnin’ Hatake.”

Tobi stares dully at her. “Maa, I’ve come to terms with it. Obito has a lot of shortcomings.”

Rin grins. “Bet he’s happy to hear that.”

“He’s not.”

She laughs.

The kettle whistles. Sakumo’s attention is drawn from the table to the stove and he disappears back into the kitchen.

Morning brings with it a chorus of voices that warm his heart. It can be hard to recall the days of before, of silent meals and cold looks. He’ll never forget. Those days are as much a part of his life as these are. They’re just as important, memories that he’ll never let go of. But they’re no longer everything in his world. As he steeps the tea, he’s hiding a smile. He was there when Hiruzen made the team assignments. It’s been unendingly hard not to share with the children; they’ve been fussing over it for weeks now, worried that they’ll be separated, that their instructor will be someone unable to cater to their unique expertise.

He’s looking forward to the look on Tobi’s face when he gets back tonight.

It’s gone quiet. Sakumo arches a brow and peeks into the dining hall. The kids are gone, the plates are empty, and he sighs. They’re fast when they want to be. They’ll make good shinobi if they can vanish without the White Fang noticing. Now he’s made a whole pot of tea for only him to drink.

He gathers up the dishes and deposits them by the sink, running the water, his fingers under the stream, feeling out the temperature. He glances absently out the kitchen window, catching the trailing colours of the kids’ clothes.

Tobi falls behind the others, his head turning to face Sakumo. Their eyes meet through the window and Tobi smiles. He waves.

Sakumo snaps his hand out from beneath the hot water with a curse. He wipes his stinging eyes and fumbles around for a towel to dry off his hand. When next he looks out at the road, it’s empty. Tobi is gone. He takes a deep breath and lets out a long, calming sigh. He’s left with nothing but his thoughts, but he’s okay.

Sakumo retrieves the last of the utensils from the dining hall and his eyes find the family altar. His wife smiles back at him. Kakashi is there, quiet and aloof. Obito grins. Sakumo has his thoughts and that’s okay.

He’s here and he’s not alone.

The war hasn’t ended, but it will.

When it does, he’ll still be here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this concludes our story. I hope you enjoyed the ride! Like with Paper Moon, I may do a short little sequel at some point in the future because I have a lot written down about how Tobi grows up and notes about various things that happen, like the formation of their team, how their body sharing affects Kannabi bridge, the eventual capture of Orochimaru, etc. Not sure if or when I'll get to it, but I'll create a series for Paper Skin if/when I do. Let me know what you thought and I hope you'll be around next time I torture Sakumo, Obito and Kakashi, because we all know it's only a matter of time.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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